FourEver Friends

Title: FOUREVER FRIENDS

Product Details
Paperback: pages
Publisher: Nightengale Press (March 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-13: 9781933449739

Labor Day morning was a pristine autumn day, mild and crisp, typical of Detroit at that season. Jessica bounded out of bed, excited, and hurried to get dressed for the event. Kennedy’s Labor Day speech in the Motor City was undoubtedly going to be attuned to the needs of Labor. She felt sure Kennedy was destined to become President. Seeing her idol in person constituted the memory of a lifetime, and she could barely contain her anticipation. But when she and her father spotted the intimidating crowd encroaching on the small podium in the middle of the square in front of the Hilton Hotel downtown, Jessica’s heart sank.

“There’s no way we’re going to even catch a glimpse of him, Dad.”

“Don’t worry, Babe.” (“Babe” was his pet name for her.) “I’ll think of something.”

Jessica and her Dad fought their way as close to the podium as possible. The fervor and charged energy of the throng filled her with enthusiasm.

I would be content just to brush shoulders with those who can actually see JFK.

Then a roar unlike anything she had ever heard swelled up from the crowd, as the young Presidential hopeful appeared on the podium. Crouching low and jumping high, Jessica struggled to see something, anything, of him. She became more and more frustrated.

All of a sudden she felt herself being lifted onto her dad’s shoulders. She only saw Kennedy’s face in profile, but it was a view she would never forget.

It’s like seeing God.

A divine quality emanated from JFK, in his features crafted to perfection and from the depths of his soul. Pure magic.

“Can you see now, Babe?”

She gasped, breathless with awe. “Oh! Oh yes, Dad.”

Enraptured, she listened to the wondrous tones of the future President’s voice, his charming Massachusetts inflections, and let herself be transported by his charisma.
How had her small-statured, handicapped father managed to hoist her upon his shoulders? She had no way of knowing, but her love for him deepened as surely as her love for that newfound leader of the Western world.

Violinist turned author ERICA MINER has had a multi-faceted career as an award-winning screenwriter, author, lecturer and poet. A native of Detroit, she studied music at Boston University, where she graduated cum laude, the New England Conservatory of Music, and the Tanglewood Music Center. After experiencing a variety of highs and lows in her quest to forge a career in New York City, Erica won the coveted position of violinist with the Metropolitan Opera Company, a high-pressured milieu but the pinnacle of her field.

When injuries from a car accident spelled the end of her musical career, she drew upon her lifelong love of writing for inspiration and studied screenwriting with authors and script gurus Linda Seger and Ken Rotcop. Erica’s screenplay have won awards in such competitions as WinFemme, Santa Fe and the Writer’s Digest.

Inspired by her journals written during her travel adventures in Europe with and without her children, Erica penned the novel and screenplay of Travels With My Lovers, winner of the fiction prize in the Direct from the Author Book Awards. The first in her journal-based FourEver Friends novel series chronicling four teenage girls' coming of age in Detroit in the volatile 1960s was published in March, 2009 by Nightengale Press. Currently she is working on the feature screenplay and TV Series Bible for FourEver Friends, as well as the next novel in the series, which takes place at Boston U. Erica has written both the novel and screenplay of her suspense thriller, Murder In The Pit, which takes place at the Met Opera, due to be published on June 15, 2010 by Twilight Times Books.

Erica has also developed a number of writing lectures and seminars on writing, which she has presented at venues across the West Coast and on the High Seas, where she is a 'top-rated' speaker for Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. Topics range from "The Art of Self Re-Invention" to "Journaling for Writers: Mining the Gold of Your Own Experiences” and "Opera Meets Hollywood." Her writings have appeared in Vision Magazine, WORD San Diego, Istanbul Our City, and numerous E-zines.

March 2009
Carlsbad, CA.

FOUREVER FRIENDS: will they become Sex and the City sirens or Desperate Housewives?

This coming of age novel transcends time to satisfy the Boomers’ yearning for the Sixties and curiosity of Generations X, Generation Jones, and Generation Y about how growing up really was back in the good old days.

Boomers lived in a time of social revolution. Young people today think of the Sixties as a bygone era, a time to be relegated to history books and their parents’ cocktail party conversations. But, there is much to learn about those outrageous days.

In her new novel, FourEver Friends, Erica Miner takes the reader back to the days when JFK gave hope to a new generation at a time when the Internet didn’t exist, when telephones were just changing from rotary dial to touch-tone, when the Jet Age was giving way to the Space Age, when cars guzzled gas, had tailfins, and two-tone paint jobs. Women’s Lib was just discovering the freedom offered by the Pill, and midnight curfews were becoming a thing of the past. Now, the Boomers are retiring. They and their offspring are a huge audience for this first in a series novel about four teenage girls set in 1960s Detroit.

The challenges facing adolescents of that era are very much the same those teens face today. The friendship of the girls portrayed in links them not only by their keen devotion to each other but also by their shared passion for classical music. Their inner city Detroit high school is a cultural melting pot where students are judged by their intellect and talents, not by the color of their skin or religious background. Two forces compel the girls: their intense drive for perfection in performing music and the constant pull of hormonal angst.

Erica Miner followed her musical passion as a young woman and logged twenty-one years as a violinist with the Metropolitan Opera. She writes what she lived, and with an authenticity that is appealing to every reader. Whether these four friends grow up to reflect the values of “Sex and the City,” or become “Desperate Housewives” will be revealed in the next novels in the series.

“The characters and the story reach into your heart and nestle there, staying with you long after you turn the final page.”
~ Dallas Woodburn, Author

FourEver Friends ISBN: 978-1-933449-73-9 ($15.95) Trade Paper
Author: Erica Miner
Published in 2009 by Nightengale Press