Rochester Hills Author Tells About Lost Love Rediscovered

Rochester Hills author Linda K. Sienkiewicz’sfirst novel, “In the Context of Love,” tells the story of a woman, who was conceived as a result of her mother’s rape, who reconnects to her first love many years later.

The story, told in the form of a letter, shares the story of the protagonist, Angela Schirrick, who moves back to her home in Ohio with her two children after the imprisonment of her husband and begins re-examining her life to find out what went wrong.

Along the way, she reconnects with her first love.

“She’s an adult, she has children, she has a husband in jail, and she has a story to tell,” Sienkiewicz told The Oakland Press. “She’s most interested in telling it to the love of her life, the one that got away.”

Sienkiewicz said she admired the women’s “strength and courage,” and decided to write a novel based on their point of view.

She wrote her first draft while studying for her master of fine arts degree at the University of Maine in 2007. It didn’t sell, though, and Sienkiewicz set it aside while she concentrated on her own family tragedy: her son took his life in 2011 at the age of 32.

“It was very tough. It took me probably two years to really feel like I could write again,” Sienkiewicz said. “Those are all things that make part of you, just like my character being conceived in a rape.

“It makes part of who she is and it’s really important to be able to talk about those things and be able to express them. There’s a lot of things that society doesn’t want to … they don’t want to talk about rape and they don’t want to talk about suicide and this or that. But we need to. I think those things are important.”

A couple of years passed after her son’s death before she began writing again. She picked up the old story “because it meant so much to me,” and worked with an editor on major restructuring.

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She signed on with Buddhapuss Ink to publish the novel, now available on Amazon and Kindle.

Sienkiewicz will appear at a Books & Authors event from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 25, at Leon and LuLu’s, 96 W. 14 Mile Road, Clawson. She also will give an author presentation at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 10, at Pages Bookshop, 19560 Grand River Ave., Detroit. More details about the book and appearances are found on lindaksienkiewicz.com.

Here are some recent reviews:

“Linda K. Sienkiewicz’s powerful and richly detailed debut novel is at once a love story, a cautionary tale, and an inspirational journey. In the Context of Love should be required reading for all wayward teenage girls—and their mothers, too.”

— Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of National Book Award Finalist, “American Salvage,” and critically acclaimed “Once Upon a River” and “Mothers, Tell Your Daughters.”

“With tenderness, but without blinking, Linda K. Sienkiewicz turns her eye on the predator-prey savannah of the young and still somehow hopeful.”

— Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of the No. 1 NY Times Bestseller, “Deep End of the Ocean”

“Absorbing, heartbreaking, compulsively-readable and insightful, Linda Sienkiewicz’s “In the Context of Love” casts a hypnotic spell. This is storytelling at its best.”

— Lewis Robinson, author of the critically acclaimed “Officer Friendly: and Other Stories” and “Water Dogs”

“Linda Sienkiewicz has written a love letter to the wonder and imperfection of everyday life.”

— Marcy Dermansky, author of the critically acclaimed novels “Twins” and “Bad Marie”

“In her dynamic first novel, Linda K. Sienkiewicz takes you on a wild roller coaster ride through love’s lowest lows and highest highs, from dark acts of sexual violence to kisses that taste like freedom. In her boldly compelling narrative, Sienkiewicz captures her heroine’s harrowing journey with both compassion and passion. Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a wise, vivid and vital new voice in fiction.”

— Elizabeth Searle, author of the Boston Globe bestseller, “A Four-Sided Bed,” and “Girl Held in Home”