Lisa Reinhard’s two midgrade/YA novels, Unbreakable Will and Washed by a Beach, are to be published by Argus Publishing!
Unbreakable Will is set in the Great Depression. Its main character is Will Handler, a twelve-year-old who is riding the rails to escape an unbearable family in Pittsburgh. He quickly finds out that life on the road is not the stuff of boyhood dreams. It is a cold, lonely, and hungry existence. There is no place like home after living with hobos and working as a ‘hand’ in the circus. He ends up saving a man and his daughter in a train accident, which brings him to meet the President himself. This is Will’s coming-of-age experience during a desperate time in our nation’s history, and it’s just as relevant today since we are facing a similar economic crisis. It is a story of grit, of digging deep inside to find the strength to go on, and of not giving up.
Unbreakable Will has the potential to be a great Accelerated Reader book. Written to target the midgrade audience, it gives important historical facts, geographical locations, and key political figures of that time. Children going to their teachers asking if this really happened, and most of it did.
Based on the true story of her father’s life, it is a moving tribute. Although she wanted to see it published before he died, it did not happen. We would like nothing more than to memorialize him in print. Reinhard began working on this novel after discovering her father was dying of cancer. It is based on his true adventures of leaving Pittsburgh when he was twelve and heading for California. Interviewing her father before his death, she conducted extensive research into the Great Depression, read dozens of books, watched films of riding the rails, the construction of Hoover Dam, and what life was like during that time. She also listened to the music from that era, all of which shines through her words and makes you feel like you are right there.
Washed by a Beach is the story of how a teenage girl and her mother escape mental and physical abuse and go on to build a new life. It chronicles the struggles as well as the triumphs of starting over after leaving everything behind.
It begins as Lucy and her mother are riding on a bus headed for “who knows where,” just as long as it’s far away from Kansas, a place of immeasurable suffering. Each time the bus stops, Lucy’s mother gets off the bus, looks around, and says, “Nope, this isn’t it, Luce…” Finally, when they run out of land and find themselves on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, they sink into the sand, which seems luscious to them, and say, “Yea, this is it.”
Therein begins the rebuilding of two lives, cleansed by their new world—washed by the beach they each so love—as they start to reclaim who they truly are, what they are good at, and what they enjoy doing.
Lisa Hussey Reinhard is a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but grew up in Louisville, Kentucky and Kansas City, Missouri. She graduated magna cum laude from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas and earned a Master’s in education from Texas A & M /Commerce. She has been an elementary, middle school, and college teacher for over thirty years. www.lisareinhard.com
Publication dates for both are 2017 – Argus Publishing
Represented by Loiacono Literary Agency
