Get Caught Reading Linda Strader

Staff Blogger

C.A. Casey

The first thing that caught our attention when Summers of Fire came to us as a submission was the writing. We had to double check, first, to make sure it was, indeed, a memoir, and second, that it was really the first book Linda Strader had written. It not only reads like fiction, it reads like it's by someone who knows how to write fiction. Pace, setting, description, characterization—it's all there from page one. As one Goodreads reader puts it, "She kept me turning pages with her carefully crafted scenes, colorful descriptions, and the personalities who jumped off the pages."

Then we find out Linda is an artist—a watercolorist—and a musician. She experiences the world through these creative filters that heightens her senses, and she's able to capture them in her prose. Her second book Uprooted is also a memoir—a prequel to Summers of Fire. Her love of nature shines in Uprooted as she brilliantly paints the landscapes around Prescott, Arizona and Mt. Lemmon, overlooking Tucson, with her words.

The one thing we keep asking Linda is, "Why aren't you writing fiction?" The answer. She is. All we can say is, be ready for a treat when she breaks away from writing about real life and allows herself to completely indulge her imagination.

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Summers of Fire

"Insightfully descriptive, from nature’s wonders and brutality, to times when she survived only on sheer willpower, truly pushing herself physically to the brink, and the rewards she found working in the great Western outdoors."

Uprooted

"Strader takes us through the peaks and valleys of her young emotional landscape and the actual Arizona landscape as she navigates her way into adulthood and a career path."