My Mother Grows Wallflowers

There isn’t a heck of a lot that doesn’t scream target about Mina Mason: her weight, the out-of-date homemade dresses, even the hoarder’s paradise loosely disguised as the Masons’ home. Dependent on Mina, her reclusive parents are oblivious to the bullying she endures at school since they’ve never been past the driveway. Mina decides blending into the background is her best defense until she can escape her bleak reality by going to college. Samuel Two Bears Miller reshapes Mina’s understated existence with his arrival at the school, his dark skin and long black braid exotic next to the Puritan pallor of the local boys. Happy, loud and often larger than life in the rural Vermont community, the Millers are the antithesis of the Masons. All through high school, Mina conceals her odd home life behind the closed doors of her dilapidated house, even after discovering love with the outspoken, confident boy. In a confrontation she can’t avoid, Mina must choose between the one person who makes her feel alive and the family who relies on her.My Mother Grows Wallflowers reveals the unwitting legacy parents pass onto their children…as precious as any heirloom and twice as fragile--self-esteem or lack of it.

C. L. Howland has lived most of her life in rural Vermont, but was an outlander working in Boston for about 8 years. During her teens and early twenties, she read George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut and Stephen King. One day, she ended up with a copy of The Flame and the Flower, by Kathleen Woodiwiss. To this day, C. L. doesn't know how she got it, but was hooked. That pioneer opened the bedroom door for the first time, and literature of interest to women has never been the same. Over the years, C. L. found herself drawn to stories of ordinary people in sometimes extraordinary situations. When her favorite author retired, C. L. wondered if she could fill the gap by writing the kind of story she liked to read. Once that thought was in her mind it was like fly paper. The more she tried to shake it off the more it stuck--until C. L. had do something about it. C. L. Howland loves breathing life into the characters she creates, as demonstrated in My Mother Grows Wallflowers, her debut coming-of-age novel with High Tide Publications. The town of Northam, Vermont holds many stories-the elementary school teacher who yearns for a child of her own, the overweight girl in homemade dresses, the veteran battling PTSD, the mother whose hoarding isn't her only secret. They all have a story. And one by one, doors in this speck of a town are thrown open in C.L. Howland's books. When not writing, C. L. Howland enjoys life in the Green Mountains of Vermont with her family, her husband, Dale, and their black Lab, Sadie. C. L. and her husband strive to keep Vermont traditions alive. They are beekeepers and harvest honey, as well as make candles, lip balms and skin creams from the bountiful hives. C. L.'s husband gathers bucket after bucket of sap to produce delicious world-renowned Vermont maple syrup. The Howlands spend the last warm days of summer gathering wild blackberries to delight neighbors with blackberry brandy nestled amongst homemade candy and cheesecake during the holidays. C.L. volunteers her time to teach quilting, in addition to designing quilted bags and accessories.