Sunset Beach by Trish Perry

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Sunset Beach by Trish Perry

Sonny Miller is tired of not knowing who she is. Soon she’ll begin graduate school to earn her masters in Psychology. But how can she counsel future clients about their identities when she isn’t even sure about her own? To that end she has cooked up a little meeting at a certain beach house in San Diego.

Sonny’s mother, classical soprano Teresa Miller, isn’t aware she’s about to be reunited at the beach house with her sister, Melanie Hines, after 25 years of estrangement. And Sonny isn’t aware her mother has invited a surprise guest of her own. Russian adoptee, Irina Petrova, finds herself dragged along on a trip so tumultuous she summons her handsome concert violinist brother for moral support.

The four women converge on the funky little beach house in San Diego, each with her own disappointments and hopes about family, identity, and love. For Sonny, the trip reveals all she expected and more than she ever dreamed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Award-winning novelist Trish Perry has written Sunset Beach (2009), Beach Dreams (2008), Too Good to Be True (2007), and The Guy I’m Not Dating (2006), all for Harvest House Publishers. She writes a monthly column, “Real Life is Stranger,” for Christian Fiction Online Magazine. She was editor of Ink and the Spirit, the newsletter of Washington D.C.’s Capital Christian Writers organization (CCW), for seven years. Before her novels, Perry published numerous short stories, essays, devotionals, and poetry in Christian and general market media.

Perry holds a B.A. in Psychology, was a 1980s stockbroker, and held positions at the Securities and Exchange Commission and in several Washington law firms. She serves on the Board of Directors of CCW and is a member of the American Christian Fiction Writers group and Romance Writers of America. Perry lives in Northern Virginia with her teenaged son.
Learn more about Trish at http://www.trishperry.com/.

Sunset Beach

Release: June 2009

Soft cover, 352 pp., $13.99

Fiction – Romance

ISBN: 0736926755

INTERVIEW:

Where did you get the idea for the book?

The setting (the funky little house on Mission Beach) and time frame (one or two weeks’ time) were already established for me by my publisher. All of the books in The Beach House series fall within those parameters. But the characters and their stories formulated over time. First I dreamed up Sonny—a young woman who had lived her entire life devoid of details about her family background, thanks to her secretive mother. Sonny had reached a point where she wanted to take control of her own life. Her mother was the barrier to that, so Sonny needed to both go around her mother and barrel headlong towards her. The hidden details about Sonny’s past arose as I created each new character. Even though my own family is close and forthcoming about our family history, there have always been fuzzy areas about which I’ve wanted to know more. I imagined how difficult it would be if your entire family history were fuzzy. I know I’d be compelled to act as Sonny did.

What are the major themes of the book?

My books always end up having a broad overall theme of the importance of seeking God’s guidance in everything. That’s never been deliberate—that’s just the way my stories work out. But for Sunset Beach, the most important theme entails our personal identities and how we determine them. Upon whom, or what, do we base our beliefs about who we are, what we’re worth, what our purpose in life is? A subtheme in the book has to do with the struggle to approach romance and passion appropriately. I think that’s a tough one for every single person I know, and it brings us right back to that whole seeking-God’s-guidance-in-everything theme.

What kind of research did you have to do for the book?

For the setting, I had already done quite a bit of research on Mission Beach and Pacific Beach for my previous book, Beach Dreams. And I read both of Sally John’s books in the series, which were the best research material I could ask for. But for Sunset Beach, I wanted to branch out some, so I sought help from friends from the surrounding areas and businesses that operated in San Diego and elsewhere in California. Also I was blessed by coming across a fellow writer who was able to answer my questions about Russian orphanages, which I coupled with online research. Finally, with regard to the psychological aspects of the story, I leaned on my own education, my textbooks, and on research available through various psychological studies and educational sites online. I’m not a fan of research, but those particular searches were fun.

With which character do you, personally, identify most and why?

Although we’re nothing like each other, I’d have to say I empathized the most with Sonny. As I mentioned above, I shudder at the idea of being in the dark about all of your family members, including your own father. I don’t identify with the questions Sonny had, but I can certainly imagine them. And the fact that Sonny got her degree in Psychology, of course, is the closest tie I have with her. Knowing how little I know with a B.A. (versus graduate education and years of actual practice), I had fun making Sonny charge forth as if she thought she could cure her family’s woes. She certainly had her heart in the right place, but her methods were slightly half baked.

What do you hope readers will take away from your book?

First, I hope they’ll find the book entertaining. I want them to enjoy Sonny’s journey and the way her discoveries uncover secrets and feelings for the people around her. I hope they’ll be amused, but only when I mean them to be! On a grander scale, I hope readers will be touched by the whole issue of personal identity and how God factors into that. I never want to write a preachy book—but I certainly enjoy hearing when my books are inspiring. My prayer before every book I write is that God will give me the story someone somewhere needs to read in order to feel more of what He wants them to feel. Then I leave it up to Him.

To order a copy of this book GO HERE.

To visit more blogs on this tour GO HERE.