LearNing to Breathe Again: A Novel
The Work of Becoming Trilogy – Book #1
by Tonya Cam
Two women. Lives they didn't choose.
A friendship that dares them to want more.
Miami, 1933. Mary Simons was supposed to fill her scrapbook with photos of her baby's first smiles, locks of fine hair, and handwritten milestones. Instead, she records respiration rates and temperatures, hoping science can save what love can't. When her baby dies, the future she imagined dies with her.
A thousand miles north, Elena Wagner has spent years trying to bury the girl who nursed her mother and sister through their final days. Silk dresses and a husband who adores her keep the grief at arm's length. But an unplanned pregnancy, and a Depression that won't end, threaten to pull her back into the one role she swore she'd never play again.
A chance encounter at the Chicago World's Fair brings the two women together. When circumstances relocate them both to the sugarcane fields of Depression-era Florida, an unlikely friendship becomes the one thing they can't afford to lose. In a time when women are expected to endure in silence, Mary and Elena must decide: keep performing the lives they're supposed to live, or risk it all for the women they might still become.
A character-driven novel about loss, friendship, and courage. Sometimes the hardest thing isn't holding on. It's learning to breathe again.
For readers of Fiona Davis, Kristina McMorris, Marie Benedict, and Lisa Wingate.
Praise for Learning to Breathe Again:
"...a touching tale of love, loss, friendship, and the painful search for new beginnings."
~ Kirkus Reviews
What inspired Learning to Breathe Again?
by Tonya Cam
This novel began with a conversation I almost didn't have.
In the final months of my father's life, he told me things about his childhood he had never shared before. Small, vivid details like the layout of the city block where he grew up, what his parents were like, and stories about the friends he had. He also told me about the brother he never got to meet. A brother who died at the age of one, of asthma. That brother became the inspiration for Janie.
When my father died, writing Learning to Breathe Again was my way to keep both of them alive.
To be clear, this novel is not my father’s story. Mary and Elena grew out of the world he described, along with a lot of what ifs. So did Edward, William, Gertrude, Frank, Dr. Brown, and everyone else who moves through this story. But the world itself is real, and I have tried to fill it with as much honesty as I could.
What started as a way to remember them became a way to find more of myself. Somewhere between his memories and my imagination, I found pieces of my own story I hadn't known were there.
I'm so excited to share this book with you, and I hope you will see pieces of yourself in it as well.
This title is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.
Tonya Cam
Tonya Cam is a third-generation Floridian, a lifelong collector of Depression-era memorabilia, and a writer drawn to women who are not only surviving. They are becoming.
Learning to Breathe Again is her debut novel and the first book in The Work of Becoming Trilogy. It's the story of two women whose lives collide at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair and whose friendship reshapes them in the sugarcane fields of Clewiston, Florida. It was inspired by her father's memories growing up, and the older brother he lost before he was born.
When she is not writing, she teaches middle school science in Gainesville, Florida. She is also the author of The Complete Guide to Shirley Temple Dolls and Collectibles.
If you love Fiona Davis, Marie Benedict, Lisa Wingate, or Kristina McMorris, you'll love the stories she writes.
