"This is fine, fine writing. Your voice is elegant, intelligent, humorous, sober, and more. It is tone-perfect and a joy to read.... Be proud of this artful, beautifully stated chronicle."
-Writer's Digest
In Gathering Roses, Thorns and All--Reflections on a Charmed Life, ZsuZsa Simandy offers readers a wild rose bouquet. Here are thirty-three exquisite personal essays loosely and lovingly tied together with one sinuous silk ribbon of a timeless theme: cultivating a passion for life by embracing every aspect of it. The highs and the lows, the storms and the stillness, the roses and the thorns are all part of a life fully lived. Staying open to sadness and joy, pleasure and pain, romance, adventure, even occasional seclusion, the reader learns to value the tradeoff nature of life, and to realize that although freedom always comes at a price, in return it offers you a charmed life.
The author's tales of loves and losses come directly from the heart, with honesty both simple and profound. Her valiant choices depict not a mere stay-afloat attitude but a repeated contemplative diving into the depths then resurfacing, again and again, learning to flow with the Flow.
Readers will find themselves compelled to join her, to flow with her. Wander the haunted streets of Budapest in a trance. Listen to the music of a gypsy cimbalon player who plays just for you, at the Red Tulip restaurant in Manhattan. Breathe in the scent of lilacs with a hungry heart in the mediaeval city of Sopron. Nestle against a man with a Cheshire-cat smile on a carriage ride at dawn through Central Park. Stroll dreamily around the Guilford Green in softly falling snow. Frolic with her delightful grandchildren. And, greet her lover at the door.
Gathering Roses, Thorns and All--Reflections on a Charmed Life is a midlife review-a sharing of a reckoning with life, something sooner or later we are all called upon to do.
To receive a copy of the book, please mail $20 (S & H incl.) to:
ZsuZsa Simandy
P.O. Box 644
Guilford, CT 06437
You can also send me an email at ZsuZsa@ZsuZsaSimandy.com for more information.
