Luana Lundquist-rowland

Railroad Ties: Broken Hearts and Mended Lives Luana Lundquist-rowland

Publisher Marketing: Railroad Ties, not unlike Huckleberry Finn, is "a children's story written for adults." The author, Luana Lundquist-Rowland has a master's degree in the psychology of personality. She is a Jungian trained psychotherapist and licensed marriage family counselor. Her medium is Sandplay Therapy. Her specialty is children. In her thirty years of practice she has written hundreds of case histories. Now with Railroad Ties she writes her brothers and her own. Sitting at her desk across from an ebony framed photograph of her brother and herself as adorable children, Luana takes pen in hand and begins writing Jimmy's obituary. In recapturing her memories of their early shared lives, she comes to a profound understanding for, and the inevitability of, Jimmy's untimely death due to his life-long addiction to alcohol. What beings as a reverie about Jimmy becomes a vibrant story of American life during and after WWII. Using her own childhood diaries, photographs, and indelible memory, Luana weaves a moving and tender rendition of ordinary daily life, which reads like a compelling piece of literary fiction. This embellished rendition of a true life story is about the impact a chapter of history has on the development of children caught in its collective wake. Sandwiched between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers, this demographic finds itself overshadowed by the huge personalities of their elders and the sheer numbers of their followers. The narrative opens in San Francisco shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Through the lens of the narrator we join Jimmy and Luana as they journey forward hand-in-hand where situations take them and the times demand they go. Traveling by themselves, they're never really alone; they seem always to be sheltered by relatives and under the protection of guardian angels. Destiny is their guide and fate their challenge. This is a very personal story of two children growing up at a time in history when life was both simple and