If you can’t be there in person…Skype yourself  home!  I  thank Gabriella Quimson and her assistant Bernadette for pulling together the logistics for this wonderful book club discussion.  Maggie, the book club president opened the session, which quickly developed into a  lively two-hour discussion that incorporated a reading of excerpts from my book.

The women asked probing, perceptive questions about mail order brides and class structure in Philippines.  Sitting in my living room still steamy from the hot July afternoon, I wished I could have beamed myself into their air-conditioned board room. But as dusk deepened into night, even the heat ceased to be a distraction.  It’s impossible to overstate the pleasure a writer derives from conversing with readers who have read and thought carefully about her story.  This  was better than chocolate.  It was better than Death by Chocolate.

At some point I mentioned that I’d read Jhumpa Lahiri’s books to learn how to do dialogue inflected with another language. At the very end of the discussion, Gabriella said they’d read one of Lahiri’s books and that as far as she was concerned, The Mango Bride was by far the better read.

Hearing THAT , made me feel like THIS:

I am taking that crown and rocking it!