Why I Wrote Defiance and Redemption, A Lifetime of Unbroken Bonds by Maria J. Andrade

Why I Wrote Defiance and Redemption, A Lifetime of Unbroken Bonds

by Maria J. Andrade

 

     We have all had our lives impacted by certain people, whether family members or friends. This book was inspired by the stories I heard as a young person about family relations, including my parents’ star-crossed relationship. My parents’ passion brought them together under challenging times, and in the end, their stars took them in divergent directions, leaving a cloud of questions behind for my imagination to explore.

     In addition, throughout my life, I was fortunate to hear about my cultural roots from three matriarchs in our family, my mother, aunt, and godmother. I also witnessed their bond of sisterhood that lasted over eighty years. They lived into their nineties, and they died a few years apart. Those matriarchs taught me to honor family, and to forgive others and oneself for what happened or didn’t happen in your story. My love to you, Maria, Josephine, and Rosa!

     Defiance and Redemption is a story that is as current today in parts of the world as I imagine it was in early 20th century Ecuador when women’s lives were more restricted. Women need each other for support and to envision a more expansive future. But this story is not an autobiography or a memoir. It is fiction and it arises out of certain truths. Yet, I like to think the story has closed a personal circle for me in which the past is like a garden. It is enjoyed, celebrated, and at death, the earth turned, for new seeds to grow.

 

Maria J. Andrade was born in Ecuador, South America, and raised in New York and California. She has a bachelor of arts degree in English literature and a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology. As a licensed therapist and writer, Maria has been diving into other people’s minds and her own, through dreams, poetry, and books for over three decades. She traveled with the Four Winds Society where she studied and was initiated into Andean shamanism in 1990.

Before Maria retired as a therapist, she specialized in women’s issues and founded the Wise Women’s Circle a ritualistic and transpersonal study group that continues today. The women support each other through life’s challenges and in the growth of mind, body, and spirit.

Maria Andrade’s books for children and adults is found in a variety of genres. This is an unforgettable first novel that reflects her imagination and creative storytelling.

Defiance and Redemption is her latest release.

Visit her website at www.booksasfriends.com or connect with her on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.

Based on a true story, Defiance and Redemption, A Lifetime of Unbroken Bonds, brings to life the joys, dramas, and triumphs of two sisters, Eva and Victoria Alisio and their loyal friend Marta. The sisters are raised by their atheist Grandfather Marcus and religious Grandmother Maria Luisa. Eva, a proud and strong-willed young woman defies her family, society, and culture, faces scandal and disgrace, for her forbidden love affair. Victoria finds herself in the center of a multigenerational conflict as her benefactor bestows a great inheritance on her excluding the rightful heirs. Marta, loyal to the childhood bond with the Alisio sisters, brings humor and support to their twists and turns of fortune. The young women’s bond of love, and perseverance, carries them through ordinary and extraordinary losses, triumphs, and ultimately to their destiny in the United States.

An important novel about 20th Century women, Defiance and Redemption, is an absorbing epic that moves through decades and destinies. It blends personal and historical events into a collective tale of self-determination, love, and sisterhood.

“This book is an engrossing page turner which will pull you in and keep you cheering for your favorite actors until the very end! Defiance and Redemption is a unique book that tells a story that is both particular to a given time in Ecuador, but also universal in its themes of love, betrayal and survival.” – Nancy Mintie, Founder of Uncommon Good

“Reading Defiance and Redemption reminded me of a distant time when I read Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel. Like these writers, Maria Andrade took me through a captivating journey of love and deep passion. Being gripped by the strong emotions that the characters possess and what they did in the end moved me profoundly.” – Maria Donovan, Retired Verizon Executive

“In Defiance and Redemption, Maria Andrade weaves together history, biography, and fiction into a romantic love and a story of three women that defy the ability of patriarchal culture to define them. We see the young women grow up to rise above the shame that tries to silence and limit them. They learn to find their voices and make sacrifices to be true to themselves as women. They leave behind all that they knew to make a better life for themselves and their daughters. This is a book to remind women of all ages where we came from, and what it took to break out and thrive nearly a century ago. Women like these paved the way for all who came after and have the rights we have today.” – Nancy Poitou, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist

Book Information

Release Date: September 21, 2021

Publisher:  Clara Publishing

Soft Cover: ISBN: 978-1734290066; 274 pages; $24.99; Kindle Edition $17.99

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3foJnuV

Barnes & Noble: https://bit.ly/3BLZYS9

B&N: https://bit.ly/3BLZYS9

Draft2Digital: https://bit.ly/3EQFud3

Want a signed copy? www.booksasfriends.com

A Few Words About Encounters by Patrick Stull

A Few Words About Encounters

By Patrick Stull

Rarely does one have the opportunity to see imagery coupled with prose that elevate the visual and cerebral experience. Encounters is that, a collection of imagery created and compiled over the last 15 years to inspire and challenge the observer while always empowering the subject. A portion of the portfolio presents something more than a photographic image. Here the imagery is developed into contemplative art pieces of the surreal genre, where the viewer is transported into the depths of their own psyche challenging them to see something new.

Another element in this body of work reflects on the power of art and its ability to expedite connections with something primal, subliminal, about who and what we are as humans. I attempt to communicate using multiple visual and philosophical dimensions. Photographers capture the moment, hoping you will see what they see. Encounters operates in multiple disciplines: the realm of the surreal, blatant reality and the abstract. I have designed and created the postures and elements in the imagery to exemplify my views of women, the power and erotic nature of the human body, society and, most of all, my love for art.

In Encounters, you will encounter 232 pages of fine art prints that include real and unique images of the human body, original drawings and photographic art. All of this is orchestrated to express and offer you a unique artistic and humanistic experience. Seldom does one have an opportunity to experience this kind of composition. I wish you an exciting and unique experience.

Encounters is dedicated to:

To the human body, a magnificent creation from the once singularity and the bowels of the earth.

To those that seek, through their actions, a more humane and just world.

To those that exercise restraint in the face of violence.

To those that cry out when the innocent creature is cruelly butchered for our vanity and entertainment.

To those that refuse to stay quiet when women and children are the recipients of violence.

American artist Patrick Stull has spent the last eighteen years mostly creating imagery about the lives of women. He searches for what lies beneath the surface of his subjects, empowering each one he encounters. He has recently ventured into the realm of surrealism, creating powerful imagery that reflects on our humanity while dealing with the meaning and power of art.

Stull say's, "My work has allowed me to venture past the camera into the realm of a humanist, an artistic life, delving into the intellectual, a more cerebral life experience, creating what I call 'connectivism.'" 

His ongoing work is based in large-scale digital photography accompanied by sculpture/body casts, composition art, painting, poetry/prose and drawings.  His art is then integrated, collectively, into exhibitions to provide the viewer a once in a lifetime experience. The presentation of the work is delivered to the viewer in a unique and emotionally powerful way.

Stull, 71, a self-taught artist, works in many artistic disciplines. Educated at San Diego State University with degrees in psychology, economics and philosophy during the 1960’s, amidst the backdrop of the counter-culture revolution and the Viet Nam War, where his social consciousness and political views were shaped. Stull emerged from a Catholic Irish/German family, one of five children where work, discipline and religion took precedence over emotional expressions of the self – a different kind of loving environment. Being a husband of thirty-plus years and father to two has taught him the power of kindness, love and commitment. 

His latest book is the fine art photography book, Encounters.

Visit his website at www.patrickstull.com.

With photography at its base, Stull offers a nuanced explication of his encounters to allow the viewer an opportunity to form a relationship with his art. While looking within ourselves, exploring our own feelings, he hopes that he will inspire greater humaneness in response to his art.

ENCOUNTERS is the second in a series of six large-format books in which artist, photographer and author, Patrick Stull explores a wide range of experiences. Using light and the physical body, the written word and his artistry he creates imagery that examines aspects of the lives of women.

Compiled over the last 18 years, the images in ENCOUNTERS, Stull says, are meant to “inspire and challenge the observer while always empowering the subject.”

Stull brings a powerful sense of the surreal and the spiritual to his work as he plots a course along the many paths of the human experience. His imagery runs from the ghostly and ephemeral to the flowing and fiery.

As much as he concentrates on the human form, Stull never forgets to focus on the humanity of his subjects. His choice of the coffee-table style book format draws the viewer into an experience both intimate and universal.

Stull’s first book in his series, titled EVOLVE, was published in 2006. A third book, titled HIDDEN DIMENSIONS, is completed and awaiting publication. Future titles in the series include DHARMA, BEING DIFFERENT, and YOGA, A HEALING MOMENT.

Stull hopes that his readers come away from the book with “a love for art and a respect for the female who gives us life and challenges us to be better human beings.

ORDER YOUR COPY HERE