Coffee Killed My Mother

Book excerpt: Anna Lee is an anxious 17-year-old whose life is stuck, largely because of her strained relationship with her mother Jacqueline, a quirky recovering alcoholic who is now addicted to coffee. The two take a road trip to explore independent coffee shops along the east coast, but Jacqueline's real agenda is an opportunity to reveal a series of disturbing family secrets-a fatal drunk driving accident, an abusive parent, and her mother's betrayal of a woman Anna Lee holds dear. "As Donna Stramella strengthens Anna Lee's voice and probes her choices, readers receive a realistic story of an entire family struggling to recover not just from alcoholism, but the codependent pattern it creates. ...thoroughly engrossing and hard to put down." Midwest Review "Coffee Killed My Mother is a wonderfully written tale about a mother-daughter journey. Stramella's novel shows an admirable level of professionalism with its characters and settings, and promises great things for the first-time author." Nancy Stancill, Author of Saving Texas and Winning Texas "Written in Anna Lee's seventeen-year-old voice, Stramella's writing is superb, her characters fully developed and relatable, her settings of small-town eastern seaboard America realistic. Easily one of the best novels I've read this year, I look forward to reading more of Donna Stramella's work." Toni Morgan, Author of Patrimony and Queenie's Place. "Stramella does a wonderful job of doling out Jacqueline's persona from behind a curtain of secrets and half-truths that drives the story's pacing to its unexpected conclusion." James White, Author of Ransoms are for Amateurs and Helen and her Brothers