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Happy Landings

Emilie Loring's Life, Writing, and Wisdom

Published by City Point Press
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

About The Book

Rom coms, meet cutes, mystery men, courageous women, and the happy endings of today draw a direct line to the words between the covers of Emilie Loring’s romance novels.

With a career spanning 40 years, Emilie Baker Loring saw millions of her books sold during her lifetime. Happy Landings: Emilie Loring's Life, Writing and Wisdom shares this best-selling author’s uplifting story for the first time. Loring’s books brimmed with intricate plot twists, intense imagery, and page-turning excitement, setting her works apart from the drugstore novels of the early- to mid-20th century. Her oft-quoted phrases are part of the American lexicon.

Her readership has continued long after her passing. Now with generations of readers, Loring’s books have sold more than thirty-seven million copies in a dozen languages. And now Emilie’s own compelling life story is finally told in full.

With never-before-published photographs, privileged access to the Loring family archives, and twenty years of meticulous research, Patti Bender reveals a woman who lived as she wrote, with intelligence, humor, and wisdom.

"After all, living is the greatest thing we'll ever do.

Why not make an art of it?" (Emilie Loring)

Emilie Loring lived through two World Wars, a pandemic, the Great Depression, and deep, personal loss with her optimism intact and thirty best-selling novels to show for it.

This is a woman’s story in swiftly changing times for women; a charming story with little-known anecdotes about prominent authors; and the story of a writer in the making, with advice and encouragement for aspiring authors.

"I am personally grateful to Patti for filling out a dim, long-ago picture of my grandmother. Her skillful, sensitive portrait brings Emilie alive for me and adds many new dimensions--hard working, organized, feminist--with an extraordinary sense of optimism, and faith that things would turn out all right." --Valentine Loring Titus, Emilie Loring's granddaughter

About The Author

A native of Tempe, Arizona, Patti Bender earned a B.A. with Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude honors in English and history at Trinity University, an M.S. at the University of Illinois, and a Ph.D. in human motor control and learning at the University of Southern California.

Patti Bender’s intimate knowledge of Emilie Loring comes from a lifetime of reading and re-reading her works, contributions from the Loring family, and meticulous research for nearly twenty years in libraries, archives, and personal collections throughout New England. She left a thirty-year college teaching career to complete the author’s biography and pursue writing fulltime. Her website, The Emilie Loring Collection (pattibender.com), has become a gathering place for Emilie’s lifetime fans.

Product Details

  • Publisher: City Point Press (March 14, 2023)
  • Length: 592 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781947951631

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