Chick lit author shares her favorite fiction
Shelly G. Keller
Eileen Rendahl
Rendahl calls herself a hopeless romantic. “I believe that love heals all wounds—that my love is so good and so pure it can heal anything. All my books are essentially about healing and second chances. They’re about women who have had something happen to them, something that turned their lives upside down and put them on a new track.” She says one of the joys of reading chick lit is its relatability. “I was 37 years old when my husband died. I met a 77-year-old woman who’d just lost her husband, and we had an instant connection. She had grown up in a very different time than I did—yet we both understood what that meant, how that felt.” Rendahl writes humorously about real issues: good and bad dating, aging, self-discovery and family dynamics. Her characters exhibit a touch of craziness that might remind you of someone you know, or wish you did.
She says the biggest challenge to writing fiction is plotting the story. “Un-Veiled has a big climactic scene. The whole point of the book was to write that scene, to get the reader there without realizing where the story was going.” Rendahl says she loves to read. “When I crawl into bed at night, I’ve always got a book.” Here she shares some of her favorite new fiction. “I chose books that were fun to read but that had impacted me emotionally as well.”
Rendahl calls Spring Warren’s debut novel, Turpentine (Grove Press, $14), a page-turner that’s also a literary Western. “For me, it’s really cool to read a book by an author I’ve spent time with while she was writing it. Spring and I ride bikes and run together. This is her first published novel and there’s lots of action—mine disasters and explosions. The book’s underlying theme examines the nature of identity: how we decide who we are, and how others decide who we are.” Turpentine is a sweeping saga of the American West in the 1870s: a lawless, rugged and natural setting for dreamers and escapees alike. Turpentine’s hero, Edward, is bold, untested and prone to failure, much like Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Characters come and go with plenty of sudden death and blood-and-guts, but Warren knows how to spin a tale with humor and sweetness.
Rendahl praises The Fortune Quilt (NAL Trade, $12.95) by Lani Diane Rich for being funny and smart with lots of feeling. “I wanted to hold that book and hug it because it made me feel warm inside. When you get a book that can sweep you along, it’s just amazing. It’s a healing story about a young woman, television producer Carly McKay, who completely falls apart when the mother who abandoned her as a child comes back into her life. Carly goes away to reinvent herself and figure out how to forgive her mother for this unforgivable thing.” Rich crafts well-developed characters with real-life problems, mixing them with plenty of humor and romance and a touch of the paranormal. The Fortune Quilt addresses fate, family issues and romantic relationships with intelligence and wit as readers watch Carly discover new love and the courage to change her destiny. 
“The best book I’ve read in several years,” says Rendahl, “is The Time Traveler’s Wife (MacAdam/Cage Publishing, $27.50) by Audrey Niffenegger. It took her five years to write it. I usually juggle a plot that only goes forward. This one is all over the place. Niffenegger’s characters are so well-rounded. For weeks after I read the book, I felt that her two main characters were my friends. This book had a very profound effect on me.” The Time Traveler’s Wife tells the story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing librarian at Chicago’s famous Newberry Library who finds himself unavoidably whisked around in time. He disappears from the scene in 1998 to find himself—naked—in an entirely different place 10 years earlier or later. During one of these migrations, he drops in on Clare Abshire, a beautiful heiress, and their lifelong passion begins. This powerful, original book is much more love story than fantasy with glimpses into life’s rich strangeness.
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