It’s never too late to find love. #LaterInLife #SecondChance #SapphicRomance #LesbianRomance #LGBTQ

 

Welcome to Sweet ‘n Sexy Divas. I’m Adriana Kraft, and on the 15th of every month, I’m here to share LGBTQIA+ stories with you—sometimes one of my own, and often, as today, stories from other authors.

My guest today is Patricia Grayhall, co-author with her partner, Linda M. Ford, of Golden Years and Silver Linings. I could not put this book down and immediately knew I wanted to feature her as a guest. Here are her thoughts about this work, followed by book info, blurb, links, and my review.

GUEST POST BY PATRICIA GRAYHALL

My partner, Linda, was understandably not happy with me sitting at my computer with my back to her writing about my old girlfriends in my memoir, Making the Rounds: Defying Norms in Love and Medicine. So I suggested we write a lesbian romance together featuring women in their late 60s like us. Although lesbian bed death is a thing, many lesbians still have vibrant and passionate love lives well into their later years.

We hit on the idea of two older women who’d led widely diverging lives meeting by chance on a golf course in Palm Springs decades after their love affair ended in 1973. This was not unlike our own second chance romance. We met again half a world away decades after our youthful affair and had to immigrate to Canada to find a country where we could live together. Which we have been doing happily for over 20 years. Learning to write fiction as co-authors brought us together in a whole new way during the pandemic.

Linda came up with the title, Golden Years and Silver Linings. While Linda wrote and published her first novel, A Foreign Affair, I published and promoted Making the Rounds and we neglected Golden Years. However, several of our lesbian friends in their sixties and seventies read drafts and loved it. For some, it was nostalgia generated by the backstory of the protagonist’s youthful affair that appealed. For most, it was the realization of a more mature but equally passionate love late in life. The project called to us again, and after many revisions and professional editing; we published Golden Years and Silver Linings on Amazon. We hope you enjoy it. It’s never too late to find love.

BLURB

Is it too late in life for a second chance at love?

At age 68, Elizabeth contemplates the coming years with trepidation. She has fallen into a rut, especially in her home life with her husband. So she jumps on the opportunity of a couple of weeks alone in Palm Springs, away from the Seattle rain.

Christina has spent two years grieving the loss of her partner and is now ready to return to their vacation condo in Palm Springs.

Elizabeth’s and Christina’s lives are turned upside down by a chance meeting on a golf course. They instantly recognize each other from their love affair when they were graduate students in Liverpool, England in 1972.

As they revel in the tender reawakening of their love in maturity, can they navigate the complexity of their current lives, integrate their families, and finally be together?

BUY LINK:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFSG8X9V/

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

The authors have been together for over 20 years; their relationship is also a second chance romance.

Patricia Grayhall is a medical doctor and author of the award winning Making the Rounds; Defying Norms in Love and Medicine. The memoir has won many awards, including Best Indie Book of 2023 in LGBTQ Memoir. She is a co-author of a second-chance lesbian romance, Golden Years and Silver Linings, and her second novel is currently with a publisher. Her essays and articles have appeared in Queer Forty and The Gay and Lesbian Review, The Millions, Lesbian Game Changers, The Seattle Lesbian, and Seattle Magazine.

She lives with the love of her life on an island in the Pacific Northwest.

Author Links:

Website for Patricia Grayhall: https://www.patriciagrayhall.com/

Facebook Author Page : https://www.facebook.com/pgrayhallauthor/

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/patricia_grayhall_author/

Amazon short Link for Making the Rounds:  https://amzn.to/3Pe4CjF

Linda M. Ford was raised in London, UK. Having lived in England, France, and the USA, she now lives on an island in the Pacific Northwest with her lovely wife. A Foreign Affair was her first published novel. She and Patricia Grayhall collaborated on Golden Years and Silver Linings to keep themselves sane during the pandemic.

Author Links:

Facebook Page for Linda Ford: https://www.facebook.com/LindaMFordAuthor

Amazon Link for A Foreign Affair: https://amzn.to/3ojlSIs

REVIEW

Reviewed by Adriana Kraft

Golden Years and Silver Linings is a breath of fresh air for all of us over sixty. I could not put it down. Having lived through the Women’s Lib of the 60s and Consciousness Raising of the 70s, I was impressed with the realistic portrayal of that era – and chagrined yet again over how long it took for our culture to move from there to inclusiveness and acceptance for the LGBTQ community (a battle we are obviously still fighting).

If I had to identify two main themes that stood out to me, they would be fidelity and authenticity. Now in their late sixties, the two main characters first fell in love with each other in their early twenties, in 1972. By then Christina already identified as lesbian, but Robyn Elizabeth had never considered that there might be any other option than to fall in love with a man. I appreciated the authors’ authentic description of her inner struggle to accept her feelings and finally act on them in that era. In 2023, readers who are younger may write off the 1972 Robyn Elizabeth as an undeserving wimp when she ultimately turns tail and runs, abandoning Christina. I fully understood her.

The dual timeline novel gives us a window into their 1972 experience, then drops us into a chance meeting 46 years later, in 2018, on a golf course in Palm Springs. As a sidebar, I love Palm Springs and thoroughly enjoyed it vicariously through the characters’ eyes.

Christina’s wife has died of cancer, in 2016, and Robyn Elizabeth is in a stable 40+ year marriage that seems relatively comfortable but lacks passion. We are allowed to experience the inner world of both characters as they journey toward what many might think an impossibility – a late-in-life happy ending.

Christina is deeply afraid of being hurt again, as she was by the abrupt break-up in 1972. Robyn Elizabeth must once more examine her feelings and become faithful – not to a marriage that is already broken, but to her authentic self. Even knowing that all romance novels have a happy outcome, I was pulled into their experience and found myself struggling to envision how it all could ever work out. And that is what kept the pages turning.

Five Stars.