Sandy Vassallo

Once in a Blue Moon Sandy Vassallo

Publisher Marketing: At the age of 63, Maddy Hudson is content with her life. She is a baby boomer, a child of the fifties and, on most days, feels young at heart and grateful for her life in South Carolina, the place where she has lived for forty-two years. Although her husband Bobby is gone, she has her daughter and two precious grandchildren along with a close circle of friends. One summer morning, while relaxing with her coffee, Maddy's daughter Olivia calls to tell her she has read an obituary for ninety-five year old Katherine Tweed in Maddy's hometown newspaper, The Madison Press, the paper Olivia knows her mother still reads daily. Katherine, or Katie to Maddy, has held a very special place in her heart for most of her life so she makes a quick decision to return to her hometown of Madison, Ohio to pay her respects and spend a little time in the small lakeside town. With her long time childhood friend Lena Sullivan, also a transplant to South Carolina, Maddy makes the drive north and spends a couple of weeks re-connecting with her past, while Lena struggles to find a way to tell Maddy of the problems she is having with husband Glenn. The short time Maddy and Lena spend in Glenn's family cottage along the shores of Lake Erie will bring back a flood of memories and emotions, some wonderful and some painful, of the time, in the summer of 1958 when, at the age of seven Maddy would meet the illusive and mysterious Katie Tweed while out playing with her best friend Billy Murphy, a rough and tumble kid who lived just around the corner. Maddy and Billy would soon discover that all the crazy stories which had circulated the neighborhood with regards to "Old Lady Tweed," were anything but true. They would come to know the caring and lonely recluse as Katie, beautiful, kindhearted, a lover of art and music, and Maddy in particular, would not only come to love her but would need her desperately when tragedy would make its way into her young life. While re-connecting with both the care-free days of her childhood and the painful memory of personal loss, Maddy will make a few more discoveries along the way, proving that once in a blue moon, good things can come our way when we least expect them. Contributor Bio:  Vassallo, Sandy Sandy Vassallo, retired educator, lives in Columbia, South Carolina with her husband John. She is a mother of two sons, and has four grandchildren. Sandy loves telling stories and wrote her first novel in late 2004 after losing her mother to breast cancer and then only two months later was diagnosed herself. She feels so grateful to be publishing this, her fourth novel ten years later. Sandy loves telling stories she feels will not only entertain, but be the kind of story to which people can relate, with real, believable characters as well as issues many of us face; aging parents, divorce, and the loss of a loved one. She manages to tell her stories with compassion and much humor and hopes to continue writing for many years to come.