A Simple Gift

by Karyn Witmer

Dell

Contemporary Romance

August 29, 2006

ISBN-13: 0553584251

Available in: Paperback

Read an Excerpt

A Simple Gift
by Karyn Witmer

Avery and Mike thought they had the perfect American family until their daughter ran away. Now Fiona's back in town...and nothing will ever be the same again.

Avery Montgomery's life changed forever in the checkout line at the Food-4-Less when she discovered her long-lost daughter, Fiona, working at the next register. Though Avery yearns to reestablish contact, Fiona has secrets and failures she can't bring herself to share with her mother—and especially with her father.

Finally forced to choose between her marriage to Mike and a future that includes their beloved only child, Avery struggles to heal the rift that is tearing her family apart. To do that, she must risk everything she cares about, confront the sorrows of the past, and rediscover the love that once bound her family together. Avery must reach out to her husband and her daughter to forge a bright new future—and she must do it through a simple gift conceived in love.



Karyn Witmer's Bio

Karyn/Elizabeth was published for the first time when she was in the fourth grade. She finished a historical novel at fifteen. After a successful career teaching art in elementary schools and at the St. Louis Art Museum, she began to dabble in writing again. In 1986 her Waldenbook Award-winning novel LOVE, HONOR AND BETRAY was published under the name Elizabeth Kary.

In 1995 she began to write stories set on the advancing American frontier under the name Elizabeth Grayson. Her eleventh book, MOON IN THE WATER, was set on aboard a riverboat and garnered recognition as both a finalist for the Romance Writers RITA award and for the prestigious Willa Cather Literary Award.

A SIMPLE GIFT, her first contemporary novel written as Karyn Witmer, was a Literary Guild exclusive in 2005. The paperback will be in bookstores in September 2006.

Karyn/Elizabeth still enjoys teaching. She occasionally teaches a course on Popular Fiction at a local college, and is a frequent speaker at writers' conferences around the country. She collects miniature English cottages, enjoys needlework, and has a weakness for antique jewelry. She is happily married to a former advertising executive and devotes much of her time to playing "Auntie Mame" to two her nieces.