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Book Title and Author Name:
Learning to Breathe Again: A Novel
Tonya Cam
Blurb:
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.
Buy Link:
Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/bzQpRL
This title is available to read on Kindle Unlimited.
Author Bio:
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.
Author Links:
Website: https://tonyacamauthor.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tonyacamauthor/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tonyacamauthor/
Threads: https://www.threads.com/@tonyacamauthor
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tonyacamauthor
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Tonya-Cam/author/B0H1L88PPY
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/68474999.Tonya_Ca
Excerpt 1:
Chapter 1: Mary – March 1933
Mary’s bare feet paced softly across the yellow pine of the living room floor as she cradled her daughter, Janie, in her arms. A week ago, she and her husband, Edward, had celebrated Janie’s first birthday. Paper streamers still clung to the painted walls. But now, Mary stared at her wristwatch and counted each of her daughter’s breaths.
“Sixty-nine. Seventy. Seventy-one.” The second hand completed its circle. Janie’s breathing rate shouldn’t be more than thirty-five.
Mary pulled her daughter close and kissed her forehead. Salt mixed with heat; Janie’s fever was getting worse.
Dawn streamed bright sunshine through the casement windows at the front of the house. Light spread across the living room floor, onto the floral sofa, the golden oak rocking chair Edward had made after Janie was born, and the standing lamp that had been on since midnight, when her daughter’s raspy cough had jolted Mary awake.
She sang softly. The same song her mother had sung to her when she was little. The one song that had always brought Mary peace. Finally, Janie’s breathing slowed.
Mary looked at her watch and counted once more. The minute seemed to last a lifetime. Fifty-nine breaths. It still wasn’t normal. It was never normal anymore. But fifty-nine was a lot better than seventy-one. The soft rattle of Janie’s lungs merged with the empty static from the radio speakers. At midnight, Mary had needed the noise to stay calm. Now, she just longed for silence.
Janie’s head flopped to the side.
Slowly, Mary lowered her sleeping daughter into her white wicker bassinet. When she was pregnant, Mary had saved her pennies so she could buy it brand new. But Janie wasn’t supposed to fit in the bassinet anymore. She was supposed to be growing bigger and stronger. Instead, Janie lay pale and hollow-cheeked, thin arms tucked in close. Mary slid an extra pillow underneath her daughter’s head to keep it elevated, like Dr. Brown had instructed.
In the early morning light, Mary pulled her pink scrapbook from the shelf of the china cabinet. She’d hoped to fill the pages with family pictures and happy memories. Instead, the pages were covered in charts and tables detailing Janie’s breathing rates, the temperatures of her latest fevers, and any other observations Mary could think to document about her daughter’s many illnesses.
Cut-out articles from newspapers dotted the pages, advertisements for various medicines and elixirs claiming to eliminate the wheezing and coughing that overwhelmed Janie every time she had a drippy nose or a slight sniffle. Severe asthma. Dr. Brown had diagnosed Janie a few months earlier. At the time, it hadn’t seemed so scary. Mary had asthma too. It was the reason her mother had moved the family to Florida from the cold of Peoria, Illinois, after her father had died. But even Florida’s beautiful weather wasn’t enough to help Janie.
Mary wrote down her daughter’s latest numbers in today’s table: March 23; 6:23 a.m.; 71 breaths/min; 101.3°; harsh/wheeze; restless; refused milk.
The last four days. 43, 50, 55, 71. It was climbing faster.
In January, the last time Janie was sick, her breathing rate had only reached 62.
The sound from the radio changed, from fuzz to a melody. It was seven o’clock and programming was beginning. In a childhood dream of what her life should have been, Mary would have waltzed into the kitchen to make her husband his morning coffee. But with only two hours of sleep, she could barely trudge.
Mary plugged in the percolator, gleaming and silver. An extravagant gift from her mother, when Mary and Edward married four years earlier, back when the future was so full of possibilities.
Soon, the kitchen filled with the nutty aroma. Edward always woke when his coffee was ready.
She cleared her scrapbook off the dining room table, tucking it back into the china cabinet right as her daughter started coughing again. The cycle never seemed to let up for Janie. Sleep, cough, wake up, cry, and fall back asleep. It didn’t let up for Mary either. She picked up her daughter once more, patting her back and bouncing her up and down. Janie’s cheeks were red; her hoarse cry was barely a whisper.
Edward rolled up the sleeves of his cotton shirt as he came out of the bedroom, his thick dark hair slicked to the side. He wore his old overalls today, the ones that meant there was work to do. A dimpled grin spread across his tanned face but faded the moment his eyes met Mary’s. “How long has she been up?”
“Most of the night,” Mary said, determined not to let on how concerned she felt.
“Is her cough better?”
Mary paused. “I’m not sure.” It was worse. But she didn’t want to share those details with her husband. Janie’s sickness was something Mary was supposed to take care of. Edward had his own responsibilities. He provided for the family, kept a roof over their heads and food on the table.
Edward made his way to the large window facing east toward the emerging light. He moved the lace curtains aside. “Perfect weather today. You should get her outside.”
March in Miami was filled with ocean breezes and clear blue skies, one of the many things Mary loved about where they lived. “I’m planning on it,” she said. If only the solution to Janie’s fever was a simple stroll in the sun.
He kissed Mary’s head and breathed in deep. “It’s going to be a great day.” Which was the same thing he said every morning. His positivity contrasted well with her worry.
