Embrace Me by Lisa Samson
I’ve only read a few Lisa Samson books (Club Sandwich, Hollywood Nobody) but I’ve got a stack of others (Straight Up, The Living End and now Embrace Me) waiting for me to crack the spine. It’s not because of a lack of enthusiasm that I haven’t read more Lisa Samson books, it’s because of a lack of time. (As if you couldn’t tell from my blog title!)
Still, if there’s an opportunity to brag on a Lisa Samson book, I’m there. I only met the author once (I just happened to sit right beside her for lunch two ACFW’s ago) but when I did, I became an instant fan. You can read my interview with her here.
Her new book Embrace Me intrigued me because I often thought about setting a story around the people in the circus, except my story would be a murder mystery, not the gripping tale Lisa is known for.
Lisa Samson is a Christy Award-winning author of 19 books, including the Women of the Faith Novel of the Year, Quaker Summer. Lisa has been hailed by Publishers Weekly as “a talented novelist who isn’t afraid to take risks.”
In Embrace Me, the latest novel by acclaimed author Lisa Samson, readers are privy to the realization that regardless of outward appearances…hideous, attractive, or even ordinary…persons are all looking for the same things: love, forgiveness, and redemption.
This story explores a world that is neither comfortable nor safe, a world that people like Valentine know all too well. Masterfully crafted by Samson and populated by her most compelling cast of characters yet. It is a tale of forgiveness that extends into all spheres of life: forgiving others, forgiving oneself, forgiving the past.
She lives in Lexinton, Kentucky, with her husband and three kids.
Biting and gentle, hard-edged and hopeful…a beautiful fable of love and power, hiding and seeking, woundedness and redemption.
When a “lizard woman,” a self-mutilating preacher, a tattooed monk, and a sleazy lobbyist find themselves in the same North Carolina town one winter, their lives are edging precariously close to disaster…and improbably close to grace.
Valentine, due to her own drastic self-disfigurement, ahs very few friends in this world and, it appears as if she may be destined to spend the rest of her life practically alone. But life gives her one good friend, Lella, whose own handicap puts her in the same freakish category as Valentine. As part of Roland’s Wayfaring Marvel and Oddities Show, a traveling band of misfits, they seem to have found their niches in an often curiously cruel world.
Residing in a world where masks are mandatory, Valentine has a hard time removing hers, because of her disfigured face but more so because of her damaged soul. It is much easier for her to listen endlessly to different versions of a favorite song, Embraceable You, and escape reality. Yet, life has more in store for her when she meets Augustine, replete with the tattoos, dreadlocks, and his own secrets. With his arrival, Valentine’s soul takes a turn.
If you would like to read the first chapter, go HERE
Here’s a quick interview about with Lisa the book:
What is Embrace Me about?
Essentially, Embrace me, at its core, is about forgiveness: forgiving one another and ourselves. Forgiveness is explored by two characters: Drew Parrish–a former mega-church pastor who once confused building up his ministry for building up the Body of Christ, and Valentine–a sideshow performer known as Lizard Woman, who must come to grips with the person who burned her face so severely the only place for her was the sideshow. Embrace Me also explores the abuse of power, both by individuals and the church. Normally when we abuse power, we end up needing forgiveness. When we abuse power, we usurp our Heavenly Father, and become so caught up in doing things our way (and sometimes our intentions can be good) we fail to love as God loves and indeed, the God we are worshiping, isn’t really God, the One True God, at all. It’s something we’ve created in our own image. It’s a heavy thought, but all this is explored by characters who still have a sense of humor!
Why a story set around a sideshow?
Well, sideshows have fascinated me for several years now. I find myself interested in something and inevitably it works its way into a novel. But more than the sideshow itself has been my reading about human oddities or as they used to be called “freaks.” You know, there’s just no comfortable way to talk about this, especially in this day and age. Calling a disabled person a “freak” is abhorrent to us and it should be. Thank goodness we’ve come a little farther as a society. However, back in the day, before disabled people could get disability and government help, the sideshow was a way for them to make a living and find community. This was a great setting to explore just that, community, and how we come together based on our insufficiencies. As Christians we find that place not in a sideshow but with each other, at the foot of the cross, in the church, the Body of Christ. And we all feel a little freakish don’t we? That we have imperfections people would reject us for if only they knew? But Jesus knows. And our Father in Heaven loves us and can take all of who we are and turn it into something for His glory if we submit to His loving will for our lives.
If you were a performer in a circus what would you do/be? 🙂
Well, in the circus I’d like to be one of those ladies that hangs from a rope and
arranges her body in pretty poses. I’d like to wear a sequined suit and feathers in my hair. Of course, I’d love to say a trapeze artist or I’d walk the tightrope, but realistically speaking, I’m too much of a chicken! A lion tamer would be pretty cool too. I like cats. Remember Guther Gebel-Williams from Ringling Brothers-the big cat tamer with the bright blonde hair? When I was a little girl I had a mammoth crush on that guy let me tell you! Then Tommy Shaw from Styx replaced him and then I met this guy named Will Samson in college . . .
Did you have to interview/ research people with these physical disabilities to create a believable voice for them?
The only truly disabled person in the book was Lella-the legless/armless woman and her situation, how she lived, what she did, was so different from what normally takes place in the life of someone with such severe disabilities, I wouldn’t have known where to even look. So I just used my imagination and made her an extremely optimistic character who understood what life was really all about, who was filled with peace and joy and love. A friend of mine, Claudia Mair Burney, and I always say, the best ability you can have as a novelist is to be a good actor inside your head, to become your characters as you write. It’s what I always try to do.
How is this book like your other stories?
People will find quirky, imperfect characters as usual, a limited setting (IOW: nobody’s going to the recesses of the Vatican to find papers hidden by a secret order of knights a thousand years ago), and a great deal of relationship building and refining. I’m still exploring the church in all its beauty and its ugliness. As usual, some will find it a very affirming experience, others a very squirming experience! Many denominations are still represented. That’s extremely important to me.
How is it unlike your other books?
One of the main voices is a male–the mega church pastor and I’ve gone where I’ve yet to go before . . . exploring the American Christian enchantment with political power (on either side of the aisle as far as I’m concerned). That’s a new topic for me, and although it’s not the main topic, it’s definitely addressed.
What do you want readers to know about Embrace Me?
Embrace Me will give you permission to forgive others and to allow them to forgive you. And that’s a pretty holy thing, something we all would benefit by realizing. God’s forgiven us. That’s such good news.
Still not convinced…
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