Heart's Storm Blog Tour: spotlight, excerpt & giveaway

By Laurie T - February 09, 2013

On this snowy Saturday morning in the northeast, we hope everyone is doing well. We are one of today's stops on the Heart's Storm Blog Tour (hosted by AToMR Blog Tours). We have a spotlight promo and there is a tour-wide giveaway to enter. Go here for the rest of the rest of the tour.

Heart's Storm by Julia Sherman

Women’s Fiction

Self-published*Release date: 9/12/2012

Purchase: Amazon

Elizabeth Shulman, a twenty-seven-year-old Russian Jewish immigrant, would like nothing better than not to die a corporate accountant working at a Fortune 100 company. She wants to walk away from the corporate rat-race, but...she’s still holding onto the painful memories from her poor past—from the days her family came to America with nothing so that their children could have a free life.

But soon one day’s event turns Elizabeth’s world upside down and inside out. With her bubble burst, Elizabeth decides to take the first step, quit her job. However, her bullying boss from HELL offers her a promotion and a big raise. But there’s a hitch. She must also agree to do pro bono work to bolster the company’s image. Her pro bono assignment: tutor unprivileged kids in a Southwest Chicago elementary school. And there, in school, her life begins to change when she gets a peek at a different type of world from her own.

Heart’s Storm is a bitter-sweet romantic comedy about love and career, family and friends, immigration and hardships, betrayal and forgiveness, and the promise of the American dream.

Excerpt:

I took another look down the hallway. Fine, then. I’m done with this school. I’m not coming back here again. What do you mean, you’re not coming back? What about Latisha? What about Brian and Kyle? You can’t just leave them, who will teach them how to read then? Someone else, they are better off with someone else. Look at what happened here today—in class and with Mrs. Johnson. I can’t handle these; I can’t help them, I only make it worse for them. They deserve better than me. Then after a quick glance back at the classroom, I headed quickly down the hallway to the main door. I pushed the door open, stepped out and saw Alex standing outside smoking a cigarette. I walked past him without saying a word.

“Hey, hey. Where are you going?” he shouted out behind me.

“Away from here!” I yelled back without turning around.

He caught up to me, gently grabbed my arm and turned me around. “What are you doing? You can't walk on this street alone. Are you out of your—” He paused and stared at my lip. “Geez, what happened to you?”

“Things got way out of control in the classroom. That’s what happened,” I breathed, brushing a stray lock of hair from my forehead. “It was a bad idea for me to come here. I can't teach these kids to read. I was trying to help them, but I only made it worse.”

With a heavy sigh he let go off my arm. Then he tossed his cigarette butt onto the pavement and stepped on it. “So what are you just going to walk away from them? Just like that?” he asked, glancing back at me.

“Yes, Alex, that's exactly what I'm going to do. Walk away from them. Just. Like. That.”

About the Author:

Julia Sherman

Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

Julia was born in Minsk, Belarus. At the age of eleven, she immigrated with her family to the United States. She currently lives in Chicago, IL with her husband and their daughter, Arielle.

She graduated from DePaul University in 2002 with a B.A. in Accounting and Finance. She also has an MBA from DePaul University in Entrepreneurship.

She studied Creative Writing with Jerry Cleaver at the Writer's Loft, and with Susan Breen at NYC Pitch and Shop, among many others. Additionally, Julia was one of the staff writers for the Chicago Holocaust Project, "Evidence of Holocaust: Never Forget."