From Viola Shipman, Author of The Charm Bracelet, The Hope Chest, The Recipe Box, The Summer Cottage, The Heirloom Garden, The Clover Girls, The Secret of Snow, and now The Edge of Summer

SPRING 2022 ISSUE

Lots Happening in 2022!

Dear Reader:

There is so much news to share with you. This year I have three books coming out. The first is my first memoir in a decade, Magic Season: A Son's Story, which will be in stores on May 3rd. The second will be my latest Viola Shipman novel, The Edge of Summer, which will be in stores on July 12th. The third will be my holiday novel, A Wish for Winter, coming out in November. 

And we have a new gift line of Viola Shipman items! 

Read on for all the details, including where I will be on tour this spring and summer. 

Magic Season: A Son's Story

“Life, like being a baseball fan, relies on two things:
hope and forgiveness.” -Wade Rouse

Magic Season is the hardest, most beautiful book I’ve written to date. It was heart-achingly, soul-wrenchingly difficult to write and yet stunningly cathartic and life-affirming.

Magic Season hits bookstores on May 3rd.

About Magic Season

Bestselling author Wade Rouse finds solace with his dying father through their shared love of baseball in this poignant, illuminating memoir of family and forgiveness.

Before his success in public relations, his loving marriage and his storied writing career, Wade Rouse was simply Ted Rouse's son. An emotional boy in a conservative Ozarks community, Wade struggled at a young age to garner his father's approval and find his voice. For his part, Ted was a hard-lined engineer, offering little emotional support or encouragement. But Wade and Ted had one thing in common: an undying love of the St. Louis Cardinals.

For decades, baseball offered Wade and his father a shared vocabulary — a way to stay in touch, to connect and to express their emotions. But when his father's health takes a turn for the worst, Wade returns to southwest Missouri to share one final season with his father. As the Cards race towards a dramatic pennant race, Wade and his father begin to open up in ways they never thought possible.  Together, inning by inning during their own magic season, they'll move towards forgiveness, reconciliation and peace.

Heartfelt, hilarious and lovingly rendered, Magic Season is an unforgettable story of love, family and forgiveness against the backdrop of America's favorite pastime.

Praise for Magic Season

"Honest, authentic, heartbreaking and healing. I devoured it in one day."
—Jenny Lawson, #1 New York Times bestselling author

"Magic Season is a beautiful, poignant and, yes, magical memoir that captures the tough and tender bonds between father and son. At turns hilarious and heartbreaking, this book will captivate readers from start to finish."
—John Searles, New York Times bestselling author

“A poignant memoir of pain and hope.”—Kirkus

“This memoir is equal parts heart-rending and humorous, and at all points filled with love. It is a story that is more than just about a father and his son, it is about the power of family and shared experience. VERDICT: Libraries [and readers] will not want to miss this!"—Library Journal

Look Who Recorded the Audiobook of Magic Season 

I was also honored to narrate the audiobook of Magic Season. It was one of the most rewarding and most cathartic experiences of my career. To bring this book to life in my own voice was a highlight of my life.

Talk About a Real-Life Field of Dreams!

I was on KMOX News Radio right before the St. Louis Cardinals OPENING DAY!

SO humbled to talk with "The Charlie Brennan Show with Amy Marxkors" Charlie is a St. Louis radio legend, as is KMOX, which is The Voice of St. Louis and the Cardinals radio station.

I can hear my dad, already seated on a fluffy cloud overlooking Busch Stadium with a beer in his hand, cheering all the way from heaven!

Preorder Promotion

If you preorder a copy of Magic Season from your favorite bookseller, email your name and a copy of your receipt to gary@violashipman.com. One random winner will be selected to receive a $75 gift certificate to the Viola Shipman gift shop.

With your support, let’s knock Magic Season out of the park!

The Edge of Summer: A Novel

“People don’t give a whit about buttons anymore, but I do. They hold value, these things that just get tossed aside. Buttons are still the one thing that not only hold a garment together but also make it truly unique. Lots of beauty and secrets in buttons if you just look long and hard enough.”  -Viola Shipman, The Edge of Summer

My new summer novel, The Edge of Summer, is a deeply personal story, woven from beautiful memories of my childhood. The novel is inspired by my grandmas’ buttons and button jars. I grew up in their sewing rooms, playing with those buttons as they sat behind their Singers making my school clothes or turning scraps into beautiful quilts.  

My Grandma Shipman (Viola, my pen name) stitched overalls at a local factory until she couldn’t stand straight. And my Grandma Rouse was also an accomplished seamstress. But even after sewing all day for work, nothing brought them more joy than finding the perfect pattern or creating their own designs and taking a seat at their Singers.  

I thought my grandmothers’ sewing machines were the most beautiful things in the world: Black with a beautiful gold inlay pattern atop the original, old treadle oak cabinet, glowing with a rich patina. Moreover, they had jars and tins – even old Crayola boxes – filled with beautiful buttons that lined their shelves. I still have many of them to this day.

As I write in The Edge of Summer, Miss Mabel tells her daughter, Sutton, the following, inspired by my grandmas’ own words to me:

“Look at these beautiful buttons. So many buttons in my jars: Fabric, shell, glass, metal, ceramic. All forgotten. All with a story. All from someone and somewhere. People don’t give a whit about buttons anymore, but I do. They hold value, these things that just get tossed aside. Buttons are still the one thing that not only hold a garment together but also make it truly unique. Lots of beauty and secrets in buttons if you just look long and hard enough.”

I wrote this novel to remind readers that families are not perfect. They never will be. But – if we were blessed to be loved by our families, as flawed as it may have been, and even if our parents were not who we wished they had been or the love they gave was not as much or as demonstrative as we would have liked – we were still blessed to be loved. At its heart, this novel seeks to ask if we should be thankful for those sacrifices and if maybe, just maybe, love is enough for us to stitch together a beautiful life and a future.

More About The Edge of Summer

Bestselling author Viola Shipman delights with this captivating summertime escape set along the sparkling shores of Lake Michigan, where a woman searches for clues to her secretive mother's past.

Devastated by the sudden death of her mother — a quiet, loving and intensely private Southern seamstress called Miss Mabel, who overflowed with pearls of Ozarks wisdom but never spoke of her own family — Sutton Douglas makes the impulsive decision to pack up and head north to the Michigan resort town where she believes she’ll find answers to the lifelong questions she’s had about not only her mother’s past but also her own place in the world.

Recalling Miss Mabel’s sewing notions that were her childhood toys, Sutton buys a collection of buttons at an estate sale from Bonnie Lyons, the imposing matriarch of the lakeside community. Propelled by a handful of trinkets left behind by her mother and glimpses into the history of the magical lakeshore town, Sutton becomes tantalized by the possibility that Bonnie is the grandmother she never knew. But is she? As Sutton cautiously befriends Bonnie and is taken into her confidence, she begins to uncover the secrets about her family that Miss Mabel so carefully hid, and about the role that Sutton herself unwittingly played in it all.

Early Praise for The Edge of Summer

“The minute I finished, I ordered copies for all my friends. It’s that good.”
—Kristy Woodson Harvey, New York Times bestselling author

The Edge of Summer Preorder Promotion!

If you are among the first 250 readers to preorder a copy of The Edge of Summer from your favorite bookseller, you will receive a beautiful button bookmark handmade in the U.S. by an East Coast artist WHILE SUPPLIES LAST! Just email your name, your mailing address, and a copy of your receipt ASAP to gary@violashipman.com.

Two-Fer Tour!

I will be hitting the road twice this spring and summer on book tour for both Magic Season and The Edge of Summer. The start of the tour schedule is below, but I will be adding dates throughout the summer, so please continue to check my website for the latest information. Please know that both Magic Season and my Viola Shipman books will be available at all of the events.

Magic Season Tour Dates

TUESDAY, MAY 3rd
LAUNCH EVENT WITH Left Bank Books
6:00 PM CT
Location: Schlafly Branch of the St. Louis Public Library
225 N Euclid Ave, St. Louis, MO 63108

WEDNESDAY, MAY 4th
6:30 PM ET
Forever Books, in-person event
312 State St, St Joseph, MI 49085
https://www.foreverbooks.net (Preorder featured on homepage)

THURSDAY, MAY 5th
6:00 PM ET
Grand Rapids Public Library, Ryerson Auditorium
111 Library Street NE, Grand Rapids, MI 49503
Schuler Books selling books

TUESDAY, MAY 10th
6:30 PM CT
Boswell Book Company, in-person event
2559 N Downer Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53211
Free, but registration required

WEDNESDAY, MAY 11th
8:00 PM ET / 7:00 PM CT
The Book Cellar, Chicago
Virtual event

FRIDAY, MAY 20th
4 PM ET
A Mighty Blaze
Friday Frontliner Interview with Caroline Leavitt

FRIDAY, JUNE 3rd
6:00PM ET
"Book Reading at the Orchard": A BookTrust Fundraiser
Tickets: $65 (includes dinner, wine and a copy of Magic Season plus a donation to Book Trust, which empowers children from low income families in Michigan and across America to choose and own books)
Crane's Pie Pantry Restaurant & Winery
6054 124th Ave
Fennville, MI 49408
Books available from Forever Books
Tickets available here

TUESDAY, JUNE 14th
7:00 PM ET
Friends Of The East Grand Rapids Library
Kent District Library East Grand Rapids
East Grand Rapids Community Center
750 Lakeside Drive SE
East Grand Rapids, MI
https://www.friendsoftheegrlibrary.org/news-and-events

For more, please visit https://waderouse.com/events/

The Edge of Summer Tour Dates

July 12-26

The tour dates for the following cities still are coming together:

Wake Forest, NC, Greenville, SC, Pawleys Island, SC, Pelican Beach, SC, Saint Joseph, MI, Elk Rapids, MI, Petoskey, MI, Traverse City, MI, Suttons Bay, MI, Detroit, MI, Frankenmuth, MI and East Hampton, NY, so please continue to check my website for the latest appearances.

And don't forget ...Wine & Words With Wade! 

Every Thursday @ 6:30 p.m. ET on Facebook!

Introducing the Viola Shipman Shop!

I love being a part of your lives, hearts, souls, memories and bookshelves, and I am now so happy and humbled to be part of your homes!

I am beyond excited to introduce the brand new gift shop and product line for Viola Shipman featuring favorite quotes from my novels. All of the products are handmade in the U.S. by a renowned Saugatuck, Michigan, artist whose heartwarming work is popular across America. The Viola Shipman gift shop includes:

*Hand-crafted art plaques (truly art for your home!)
*Coasters
*Keychains
*Notebooks
*Tea towels (four new spring/summer designs just in WHILE SUPPLIES LAST)
*And MORE!

The shop exists online and at the adorable Saugatuck, Michigan gift store called It Is What It Is (Saugatuck-Douglas, Michigan, is my hometown, and the setting of The Edge of Summer). The store ships anywhere in the U.S.

Here is where you can shop to buy all the wonderful products!

These items make the perfect Mother’s Day gift for your favorite baker, cook or gardener, as well as the ideal surprise for your new graduate, birthday girl, or your beloved mother, daughter, grandmother, aunt or BFF. They also just make a stellar spring and summer surprise for YOU!

Truly hope you love them ALL! XOXO!

A Recipe for Spring and Summer

There is nothing more special than brunch at home (with lots of coffee!) on a beautiful weekend. And there is nothing more special than this delicious, pretty coffeecake.

My Grandma Shipman grew rhubarb in her Ozarks garden. It was such a gorgeous color, but I did not actually love the taste of rhubarb as a child … until she made this coffeecake (some of my other favorite rhubarb recipes of hers include rhubarb jam, pie and crisp).

The best time to harvest rhubarb is during the months of May, June, July and early August (My grandma’s rule of thumb for remembering this – which I do to this day – is only to harvest rhubarb in months without an "r" in them … May-August). After this, it's best to let the plant be, so it can regrow and recharge to survive the winter. You can cut the flower stalk away before it blooms to help extend the harvesting season.

I truly hope you love this recipe from my grandma (which appears in my novel, The Recipe Box)!

Rhubarb Sour Cream Coffee Cake
With Cinnamon Streusel Topping

Ingredients

1 1/3 cup sugar
½ cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup sour cream
Dash salt
2 cups flour
2 cups rhubarb, chopped into ¼ inch pieces (Let rest on paper towels and then blot dry)
¼ teaspoon maple extract
Topping
½ cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon butter (room temperature)
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions for Coffeecake

Use mixer to cream sugar, margarine and vanilla. Add egg to wet ingredients and mix on high.
Turn mixer to low, add sour cream.
In separate bowl, blend baking soda, salt and flour with fork.
Slowly add dry ingredients to wet in mixer, mixing on low. Mix just until all are combined. Do not overmix.
Remove bowl from mixer and slowly fold in rhubarb with spatula.

Directions for Topping
For topping, place all three ingredients into bowl and cut with pastry cutter until consistency of a crumbly pea-sized mixture
Pour into buttered 9x13 glass baking dish.
Sprinkle topping over coffeecake.
Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

A New Email Address for this Newsletter...

Starting with my next newsletter, these emails will come from newsletter@violashipman.com instead of heirloom@violashipman.com. If you have any anti-spam settings set on your email provider for the current email address, please make sure to change them so you'll continue getting my newsletter!

Happy Spring & Summer!

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