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| A Short Story About Boobs! |
The Perfect Breasts is a personal and raw short story about boobs, written to honor breast cancer awareness month. It is about the pivotal moments in Hannah Clein’s life. The moments that change everything. All proceeds from every page read on Kindle Unlimited to every book bought will be donated to cancer research. Thank you for your help.
Hannah Clein will always remember the day she went to a department store with her mother to buy her first bra as her last best day, “B.C.” before the cancer. She considered herself an ordinary child who loved challah bread, reading, and her family – often in that order.
With a normal life in the rear-view
mirror, we follow Hannah over three decades, as she navigates the tricky
transition from girlhood to womanhood. All her life, she just wants to belong. Be
normal.
In a tale that explores a women’s complicated relationships with her body, and the love of her life, we learn the psyche is a funny thing. What are the perfect breasts? And how does the loss of a loved one affect those left behind?
The Perfect Breasts mixes family lore with imagination in a compelling tale of loss, longing, and love.
Early Editorial Reviews:
The Perfect
Breasts is a book that should be required reading for
every woman because it does not soft-soap the emotional effect of a
life-threatening disease and forces readers to face a hard truth: The ultimate
symbol of femininity and womanhood can either be a source of great strength and
pride or when lost, a weapon to destroy one’s faith in life and one’s self. —
Susie Black author of The Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series
The Perfect Breasts is a heartfelt story about breast cancer and how it affects all of our lives. Because, yes, almost everyone knows someone who has been diagnosed with breast cancer.
In this story we follow, Hannah, a Jewish girl through three decades, from the death of her beloved mother from breast cancer to becoming a self-sufficient woman. Cancer itself becomes a character burrowing into Hannah’s psyche. Knowing oneself is difficult enough, but with this added fear, Hannah struggles to find happiness.
Cara Bertoia handles the issue with sensitivity and compassion. She takes us on Hannah's journey. leaving us with hope and a promise for a good future. This is a story which should be read by everyone. — Janie Emaus author of Latkes for Santa Claus
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| The six pivotal moments from my life Cara Bertoia |
These are the Six Pivotal Moments of My Life from Cara Bertoia. What are the pivotal moments of yours? Everyone has those moments although we might not realize it at the time only years later.
I had documented six moments in Hannah’s life. But then I began to wonder how could I distill my life into six moments? The thing about pivotal moments is that you only realize they were pivotal looking in the rear-view mirror. Some are good and some are bad, but it is those moments that make a life. What were the pivotal moments of your life?
1. 1. The first disappointment in my life came at nine years old. My family moved from my beloved Charleston, South Carolina to Charlotte, North Carolina, only a four-hour drive but a world apart. Charleston was a walkable city filled with antebellum mansions, and beaches galore. And Charlotte a suburban ghost town where you never saw a human walking.
2. 2. In my senior year in college my boyfriend decided he didn’t want to get married. Not sure what to do next I decided to spend my last semester at the University of the Americas in Puebla, Mexico. I loved it there. When I got home he proposed, but I decided I didn’t want to be married. I wanted someone to want me when I was there not because I went away.
3. 3. My first year after college I was teaching school and living in Charlotte. Then one day my father dropped dead from a heart attack while playing tennis. My heart broke because he was the parent that I felt the closest to. I joined the sad club that day, but it cut the ties that tethered me to Charlotte.
4. 4. On a summer break from teaching, I traveled to Lake Tahoe to work as a blackjack dealer. I fell in love with the place, a crystal-clear blue lake surrounded by the Sierra Nevada mountain range. I never returned to teaching and spent the next three years dealing at Caesars Tahoe.
5. 5. Eventually I moved back east to Boston and took a job in hi-tech. A friend from Tahoe passed through town on her way to New Zealand to work for Princess Cruises. An adventure down under sounded like more fun than my job, so I applied to the cruise ships and got a job traveling the world.
6. 6. I had lived on cruise ships for five years when I decided I needed to leave and go back to living in the real world. I had been getting a bit anxious about my future. Three months before the end of my contract my Prince Charming appeared. We both worked on the Star Princess. When I left Ray jumped ship to leave with me. We married a week later. I discovered that although I had sucked at dating, I was great at marriage. We took jobs at an Indian Casino in Palm Springs, California. It turned out to be the best job of our lives.
Links to the Perfect Breasts on Amazon Kindle and Kindle Unlimited:
The
Perfect Breasts by Cara Bertoia - BookBub
The
Perfect Breasts by Cara Bertoia | Goodreads
Caroline Popov, alone, heartbroken, and deeply in debt ends up in glamorous Palm Springs, California where Native casinos have just opened, offering employment to thousands. She lands a job at the Palm Oasis Casino and is mentored by the charismatic tribal chairman, John Tovar.
Embraced by casino culture, Caroline works her way up to casino manager of the Night Hawk, in the High Desert town of Joshua Tree. There, she is responsible for managing multicultural team members, satisfying the demands of challenging guests, growing revenue while rooting out corruption.
In the process of rediscovering her inner strength, she learns, you have to gamble like your life depends on it. With her life on the line can she pull out a win?
Click the link below to order at Amazon, enjoy your stay at the Night Hawk!
Click the link below to order at Barnes and Noble
Casino Queen by Cara Bertoia | NOOK Book (eBook) | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)
Desert
Sun article Casino Queen
An excerpt from the article:
Cara Bertoia stacks the creative cards in our favor in Casino Queen
(The Wild Rose Press), a compelling mystery set in Palm Springs and Joshua
Tree.
Bertoia lived in
the Coachella Valley for nearly 22 years. In fact, she and her husband, Ray,
were casino employees and long-time residents in Chino Canyon before moving to
Florida several years ago. Casino Queen arrives at the perfect time when
crime-solving tales that revolve around strong female protagonists aren’t just
a luck of a draw. They’re downright successful. (See TV’s "Equalizer"
and "Poker Face" for samplers.)
To that end, Casino Queen has
the makings of a streaming series.
To check out my interview in The Big Thrill, click the link below.
About The Author:
When I was a child, I grew up in a very crowded house in suburbia. I have three sisters. The way I would escape all the mayhem was by reading. From the time I could read I became a voracious reader. By the age of eight I was reading my parents’ novels, whatever books I could find. I wanted to move to a big city like the ones in their novels. At night instead of counting sheep I would tell myself Cinderella type stories where I lived in a fabulous apartment and got to be the heroine.
After college I moved to a big city, Boston. My first real
writing class was when I worked in high-tech in Boston. I took a class at
Harvard Extension, and the professor read my story aloud to the group. He asked
me to read it, but I was too self-conscious, because it was the first story I
had ever written. From that day on I was hooked. I had finally earned my place
in the big city.
