This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Free Book Program, which is open to all readers and is completely free. The author will provide you with a free copy of their book in exchange for an honest review. You and the author will discuss what sites you will post your review to and what kind of copy of the book you would like to receive (eBook, PDF, Word, paperback, etc.). To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email.
This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Book Review Exchange Program, which is open to all authors and is completely free. Simply put, you agree to provide an honest review an author's book in exchange for the author doing the same for you. What sites your reviews are posted on (B&N, Amazon, etc.) and whether you send digital (eBook, PDF, Word, etc.) or hard copies of your books to each other for review is up to you. To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email, and be sure to describe your book or include a link to your Readers' Favorite review page or Amazon page.
This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Book Donation Program, which was created to help nonprofit and charitable organizations (schools, libraries, convalescent homes, soldier donation programs, etc.) by providing them with free books and to help authors garner more exposure for their work. This author is willing to donate free copies of their book in exchange for reviews (if circumstances allow) and the knowledge that their book is being read and enjoyed. To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email. Be sure to tell the author who you are, what organization you are with, how many books you need, how they will be used, and the number of reviews, if any, you would be able to provide.
Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
In Dance While the Fire Burns, Deborah Ann Lucas traces a life marked by repeated upheavals as her childhood moves give way to adult years shaped by almost every conceivable calamity, and the ongoing presence of horses and art as the only stable parts of her world. At the center of the memoir is her bond with her older brother Chuck, whose steady presence carries her through family breakdown, failed marriages, and years of starting over in unfamiliar places. As Chuck’s health declines from AIDS related illness, Lucas is drawn back through the history that shaped them both, from Australia to Los Angeles to the Midwest. What emerges is the life story of a woman determined to build a lasting home from memory and devotion on a farm she hopes will finally hold.
Deborah Ann Lucas’s Dance While the Fire Burns is a beautiful, sweeping memoir, conversationally written in a way that immediately connects as Lucas allows us into the most intimate moments of her life. What makes this memoir so unique is how Lucas describes joy and pain sitting side by side, from a sale of Lucas’s watercolor during her senior exhibition that affirms her life as an artist, to her sketching Chuck at his bedside as she administers morphine, giving the book one of its most unforgettable passages. That was the second time the author brought me to the brink of tears. The first is when she is forced to sell Kentucky, the bay thoroughbred given to her for her sixteenth birthday, after an abrupt departure from Australia. Readers looking for a memoir that digs deeper than the usual fare, from devotion during the early AIDS crisis, to the labor behind serious studio work, and a sharply observed account of how repeatedly losing what anchors a woman shapes the life she later builds, will embrace this book. Very highly recommended.
