Friday, September 11, 2015

The Middle of Somewhere - 12 Things About Sonja and a Giveaway

A troubled, young widow hikes from Yosemite Valley deep into the wilderness on the John Muir Trail to elude her shameful past in this emotionally gripping story from the author of House Broken.

With her thirtieth birthday looming, Liz Kroft is heading for the hills—literally. Her emotional baggage weighs her down more than her backpack, but a three-week trek promises the solitude she craves—at least until her boyfriend, Dante, decides to tag along. His broad moral streak makes the prospect of confessing her sins more difficult, but as much as she fears his judgment, she fears losing him more. Maybe.

They set off together alone under blue skies, but it’s not long before storms threaten and two strange brothers appear along the trail. Amid the jagged, towering peaks, Liz must decide whether to admit her mistakes and confront her fears, or face the trail, the brothers and her future alone.

“Twelve Things about Sonja”
1  My husband and I hiked the John Muir Trail—the 220-mile trail where Middle of Somewhere is set. This past June we walked 275 miles in the French Pyrenees. I guess you can say we like walking.
2  I’ve been a nursemaid to spotted hyena cubs.
3  In seventh grade I got in trouble for helping all the frogs destined for dissection escape the classroom and slip into a nearby pond.
4  In graduate school, I was a subject in a psychology experiment in which I was hooked up to an EEG and heart monitor and given jaw-dropping doses of Ritalin, caffeine and cocaine. I needed the money.
5  I believe in true love and found it.
6  I lived in the Maasai Mara of Kenya for a month in a tent with my five-month-old daughter and washed her diapers in the river.
7  I’ll take mountains over beaches any day.
8  My parents were German immigrants who spoke German to us at home. My siblings and I answered in English, and eventually my parents adopted Germenglish, then English, as their default tongue.
9  Maria Von Trapp gave me a cuckoo clock for my sixteenth birthday.
10  I can recite an alarming number of dirty limericks.
11  I have no fear of heights (but am slightly suspicious of widths).
12  My younger daughter calls me Martha because I bake my own bread and grow three varieties of kale.

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About the Author:
Sonja Yoerg grew up in Stowe, Vermont, where she financed her college education by waitressing at the Trapp Family Lodge. She earned her Ph.D. in Biological Psychology from the University of California at Berkeley and published a nonfiction book about animal intelligence, Clever as a Fox (Bloomsbury USA, 2001). Her novels, House Broken (January 2015) and Middle of Somewhere (September 2015) are published by Penguin/NAL. Sonja lives with her husband in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

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Middle of Somewhere by Sonja Yoerg
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