Hannah Morgan's life is at a standstill. Her dreams of becoming an artist vanished with the sudden death of her grandmother and mentor. To appease her distant and disapproving mother, Hannah gets a respectable job at a high-end day spa.
Instead of painting masterpieces, Hannah spends her days painting nails and giving facials to wealthy women. Her dreams for the future have become a hideous nightmare. And it just keeps getting worse. She catches her boyfriend cheating, loses her job, and has to watch from the sidelines as her best friend, Jasmine Blue, goes after her own dreams of owning her own salon.
Then she meets Aaron, a working artist, and finds in him a kindred spirit. And, to her surprise, she finds the courage to follow her dreams. When circumstances beyond her control threaten to destroy both her relationship with Aaron and her dreams of a bright future, Hannah fears her mother was right-that some dreams aren't meant to come true.
“As a small child I dreamed of growing up to be a chestnut mare. I was terribly disappointed when I found out people couldn’t magically transform into animals but I got over it by immersing myself in the world of fairy tales and thus began my lifelong passion for reading and make-believe.”
Lora Deeprose has a B.A. in Drama with a minor in History. She was born in the small town of Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta; the middle child of five girls. In 2006, she and her eldest sister moved to a hobby farm in the remote Kootenay area of British Columbia and for five years had several country adventures which included raising chickens and goats, encounters with wildlife and wrangling the neighbour’s horses. Currently she lives in BC’s Eastern Fraser Valley.
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Character Casting (according to the author)
Hannah Morgan: Emma Watson
Jasmine Blue: Jennifer Lawrence
Aaron: Eddie Redmayne
Christian: Armie Hammer
Snippet:
Jas left for home at ten, and my mother headed to bed shortly after that. Da and I decided to haul my boxes up to the attic for storage. We put all my things except Noni’s self-portrait and her keepsake box in the attic. Those two treasures went in my bedroom.
I hadn’t been up to the attic in ages. After helping me with the last box, he kissed me good night and gave me strict orders not to stay up too late.
Before heading downstairs, he turned to me. “You okay?”
“Yeah, Da, I’m fine.” I gave him what I hoped was a cheery smile. “Sleep well.”
“You too.” He shut the door. It closed with a soft click.
I walked the perimeter of the attic. It wasn’t just a place to store junk: this had been Noni’s and my painting studio. Unframed canvases were stacked in layers against the walls, and a few hung alongside tacked up pencil and charcoal drawings. I wandered over to the charcoal drawing I’d made of our dog, Chipper, when I was six. When I got older, and Noni helped to refine my skills as a painter, charcoal on paper was replaced with oil on canvas. Pictures of our farm animals and my family evolved into still life studies, moody landscapes, and more complex portraits of my family and friends.
I looked around. Something wasn’t right. These were all my paintings. Noni’s work wasn’t here. I stopped my tour of the studio in front of my easel, still set up in the middle of the room, like a loyal pet waiting silently and patiently for my return. Noni’s easel was missing from its customary place next to mine. I found it propped up under the east dormer next to a large canvas tarp. I pulled back the musty tarp, revealing the stack of paintings beneath. These were all Noni’s. Mom must have put them here. Resentful, I kicked the drop cloth out of my way, sending up a cloud of dust in the process.
I lingered over the paintings, hauling each one out and placing it on my knees while I crouched on the dusty floor. Each possessed a secret life that shone from the layers of pigment. A clarity of detail, a richness of texture. These were good enough to be hanging in any high-end gallery in town. And that’s where they should be, not discarded in the dark, lonely corners of this forgotten place.
“Noni, I miss you so much. My life’s become unraveled without you, and I don’t know what to do. Please, Noni, I need your help,” I whispered to the empty room.
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