Susan Schneider and my brother Steve with their grandsons, Ari (center), Ezra, and Max.

For as long as I can remember, my sister-in-law Susan Schneider has wanted to write a novel. She was a high school English teacher for most of her career, so the possibility of writing a book was not that far-fetched.

Unlike most of us who say we are going to do something and never do, Susan actually wrote a novel soon after she retired 10 years ago. She completed it just as the publishing business was crashing due to a poor economy and the advent of electronic publishing. It is almost impossible today to get a publishing house to take on a new author unless you have a proven track record somewhere on the publishing scene.

With encouragement from her agent, family, and friends, Susan published an electronic book that is now available on Amazon. In the digital age, this is a great decision because she is capturing a huge audience and there is stronger potential for connecting with other publishing opportunities.

Fire in My Ears is the story of Mary, a too beautiful young woman who has been taught that her appearance is her only asset. She fails to develop any additional aptitudes or talents, tragically concluding that her beauty is all she needs. She makes one monumental decision just as she embarks on adulthood, and this sparks her life journey that is replete with anger, resentment and despair. The misery she has spawned spreads directly to her children and grandchildren, infecting her descendants like a family plague. Determined to save at least one member of her family from this curse, she begins telling Sarah, her nine-year-old granddaughter, the story of her life. Sarah tries to understand the messages in her grandmother’s nightly tales as she is navigating her own developing life.

Learn how Mary makes her way from a shtetl in Belarus to the East End of London and on to New York all the time laboring under the cloud of her ill-fated decision. Meet her seven children, their husbands and wives and children, and discover how the seeds of their unhappiness were planted long before their births. And finally, admire the heroic effort that Mary makes to atone and save Sarah.

Interested readers can obtain an online version from the Amazon.com Kindle Store for only $2.99 until June 15th. The price increases after that date.

Susan is working on her second book, so stand by.