Anatomy Of A Chihuahua: Anatomy Of A Chihuahua Notebook Journal 6x9 Personalized Customized Gift For Chihuahua Mom Dad Lined Paper

The novel is a biographical, literary, historical fiction suitable for young adult and adult readers of all ages. A visual artist and teacher, the author has autographed the 'ABOUT THE AUTHOR' page and has included images of original drawings she had done while writing the novel. Maura has participated in every phase of the self-publishing process from the writing, editing, formatting, cover design, and marketing. However, Maura would like to acknowledge and send a special thanks to Karen Curlett Kelly, Graphic Designer & Artist from Belfast, U.K. for the cover image, a gift to her in 2011. In addition, she wishes to recognize and thank Kathleen Sukalac (Plaskon), a former high school classmate at St. Paul Cathedral H.S. (Pittsburgh) Class of 1965, for her special favor in editing the book. This is the seventh and last edition of her original manuscript, "The Quilt" written in 2007 and first published at createspace.com as THE SHATTERED SEEDS: "SOFIA'S STORY," now retired. Please refer to the novel for a list of all of the previously published editions.

A DESCRIPTION OF THE NOVEL

Although born at different times on different continents, the two central characters in SOFIA'S STORY, THE SHATTERED SEEDS share a commonality - both are writers and each had become an immigrant to America when war had erupted in their homelands during the volatile 20th Century. In addition, both of their ancestors trace back to farmers, the cultivators of seeds. Echoing the theme in the title, the story draws the comparison of shattering the garden variety of seeds prematurely to the seeds of humanity precipitously destroyed by war. The premise is that the act of improper 'shattering' will have a negative effect on both plants and humans, as evidenced in the lives of Sofia Gunter and Binh-Ly Tai.

A German by birth, Sofia's ancestors had been farmers outside of Berlin until WWI had left them homeless. Born in 1919, her patriotic father had arranged her early marriage to the neighborhood police officer turned Nazi. No longer able to stand the evils of the Third Reich, she runs away from him, a flight that had shattered her life, causing her to begin anew in America and to denounce her German heritage at age twenty-three. The tragedy of war follows her to America when her only soldier/son from a second marriage dies in another war in South Vietnam. When the novel opens, Sofia is an old woman in ill health and a famous writer who had used her philanthropy to found a chain of world adoption centers for needy children. She wants to find closure for her tragic yet triumphant life that war on two continents had determined.

Like Sofia's ancestors, Binh-Ly's ancestors had been farmers until the Viet Cong had destroyed their village. Fathered by an unknown African American soldier sometime in 1972, abandoned in infancy in the jungle, and adopted by an American couple who had raised her in Atlanta as 'Janene McDeenon', she is now working at her dream job as a writer. She hopes that the research for her current writing assignment on 'Adoption in America' will also help her find her own roots. Still grieving the death of her loving adoptive American mother, she wants to uncover the secrets of her conception in Vietnam and dreams of finding her Asian family. As the two women get to know each other, they form a bond that transpires time and the distance of three continents. Janene wants to find the heritage that she had lost in infancy and Sofia wants to embrace the German heritage that she had once held so dearly one more time before she dies.