NW Coast Book Fair Sellout and Hitting the Amazon Hot New Release List

 

My debut  at the NW Coast Book Fair yesterday was a blast on a drop dead gorgeous summer day here on the Oregon coast.  

Sandwiched between two best selling thriller authors while  sipping on mango slurpies and nibbling on Matron Griffin’s homemade shortbread made from the recipe straight out of Umzimtuti’s New Government Hospital’s archives I sold out of books.

Meanwhile the Kindle e-book went on Amazon’s Hot New Releases best selling list along with Joseph Conrad and Wilbur Smith!  Wow! The company I’m keeping!

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Hit the Amazon Hot New Releases page at #4!

My editor told me I am only allowed one exclamation point in my life but really this does deserve three in a row.

If you haven’t bought your copy of Whitewashed Jacarandas yet here’s the info to make it easy for you:

ISBN 10: 1515366820 Kindle e-book

ISBN 13: 978-1515366829 paperback

US Amazon link

Amazon UK or Amazon UK

Soon it will be available on Book Depository UK which offers free worldwide shipping.  I will keep you posted, it could take up to eight weeks.

Good, Fast or Cheap?  My son tells me you can only pick two. Whitewashed Jacarandas  book cover really is lovely and the book feels good in your hands but the Kindle e-book is your fastest, cheapest option and I did opt for Kindle Unlimited so you can download on any of your devices and also share the e-book with others.

I”ll keep you posted as other options for purchase become available.

I so look forward to your comments on Whitewashed Jacarandas and further discussion.

In the weeks ahead I will post discussion questions for book groups

 

3 Comments

  • lynette Hirschowitz

    Reply Reply August 21, 2015

    Wow Diana well done. So pleased the Book Fair was a success. Really looking forward to reading the book.
    Lynette

  • Clarkson

    Reply Reply October 27, 2015

    BOOK REVIEW : Life in colonial Southern Rhodesia

    By Gerald Clarkson, ex-Reuters, Financial Times of Canada and other publications

    ‘Whitewashed Jacarandas’ by Diana Polisensky is a remarkably detailed tour de force portraying life in a tough gold mining community in Southern Rhodesia from 1946. That is prior to Ian Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence and the advent of Zimbabwe with the murderous regime of Robert Mugabe.

    The author, now living in Oregon, USA, grew up in a medical family in the colony. She says the book marks the first installment in a saga chronicling the end of the colonial experience in that region. Although this is pitched as a novel there seems to be a lot of apparently autobiographical material woven in.

    Ms Polisensky is clearly an admirer of Sir Edgar Whitehead, prime minister ,1958-62, and statesman of international stature, She tells how Whitehead advised the novel’s hero, Dr Sunny Rubenstein – who was looking for a medical appointment – to take a chance on Southern Rhodesia’s exciting growth potential.

    Whitehead and Rubenstein were sharing a compartment on a long nocturnal rail journey. “I drew up a financial plan for Southern Rhodesia before the war (WW2) broke out,” said Whitehead, “and prime minister Huggins had me refine it while I was holed up incognito at a hotel….between assignments during the war.” He noted that the government had purchased a lime and iron works close to the Cheetah gold mine which the train was heading for.

    “If Huggins can win another term it’ll be big – I’ll see to it that plenty of money is made available. Get in on the ground floor,” he urged Dr Sunny. Whitehead envisaged a major steel complex developing on the site. “It’ll be the industrial hub of the country with a model residential community.”

    The tale then focuses on Sunny Rubenstein’s quest for medical work at the Cheetah gold mine where a rough and tough community lacked competent medicine. And in a jiffy the existing doctor – who desperately wanted to find a post somewhere else –commits an act of gross fraud on Dr Sunny. He sells him the Cheetah practice for £2,000 when in fact the practice belonged to the mining company.

    Dr Sunny takes up the job and soon discovers the nature of the place. The mine manager tells him, “You know the Natives are lazy bastards – always looking for a way to slough off. That’s your main job, you know, to weed out the loafers at Sick Parade…..you see cutting corners makes all the difference to British shareholder returns. That’s how you survive.”

    There were no clinical records, surgery was virtually impossible, no anesthetics skills, and TB sufferers were simply sent home.

    But by dint of enormously hard work and risky lobbying for funds Dr Sunny manages to modernise the facilities and upgrade the nursing staff.

    The underlying tale – Dr Sunny’s relationship with a beautiful and long suffering wife – comes to a happy ending. But only after abrupt confrontations and perhaps the rudest and most conceited letters ever penned by a husband.

    ENDS

    • Diana Polisensky

      Reply Reply October 27, 2015

      Gerald, A tour de force! Thanks so much for taking the time to write such a great review. Do spread the word that Whitewashed Jacarandas is out. Personal recommendation is the best way to bring this overlooked, idealist period and the people that populated it to light.

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