January 22, 2019
 January 22, 2019 This Bookreporter.com Special Newsletter spotlights a book that releases this winter. Read more about it, and enter our Winter Reading Contest by Wednesday, January 23rd at 11:59am ET for a chance to win one of five copies of MAID: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive by Stephanie Land, which is now available and will be a Bookreporter.com Bets On title. Please note that each contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!  Today's Featured Book and Contest:  At 28, Stephanie Land’s plans of breaking free from the roots of her hometown in the Pacific Northwest to chase her dreams of attending a university and becoming a writer were cut short when a summer fling turned into an unexpected pregnancy. She turned to housekeeping to make ends meet. With a tenacious grip on her dream to provide her daughter the very best life possible, Stephanie worked days and took classes online to earn a college degree, and began to write relentlessly. She wrote the true stories that weren’t being told: the stories of overworked and underpaid Americans. Of living on food stamps and WIC (Women, Infants and Children) coupons to eat. Of the government programs that provided her housing, but that doubled as halfway houses. The aloof government employees who called her lucky for receiving assistance while she didn’t feel lucky at all. She wrote to remember the fight, to eventually cut through the deep-rooted stigmas of the working poor. MAID explores the underbelly of upper-middle-class America and the reality of what it’s like to be in service to them. “I’d become a nameless ghost,” Stephanie writes about her relationship with her clients, many of whom do not know her from any other cleaner, but who she learns plenty about. As she begins to discover more about her clients’ lives --- their sadness and love, too --- she begins to find hope in her own path. Her compassionate, unflinching writing as a journalist gives voice to the “servant” worker, and those pursuing the American Dream from below the poverty line. MAID is Stephanie’s story, but it’s not her alone. It is an inspiring testament to the strength, determination and ultimate triumph of the human spirit. Click here to enter the contest by 11:59am ET This is a special newsletter for our Winter Reading Contests, which will mail on select days between now and Thursday, February 14th. This newsletter is separate from our weekly Bookreporter.com newsletter, which mails every Friday. You can subscribe to that newsletter here. Please visit the other websites in TheBookReportNetwork.com: 20SomethingReads.com, ReadingGroupGuides.com, GraphicNovelReporter.com, Teenreads.com, Kidsreads.com and AuthorsOnTheWeb.com. |
