Ellen Prentiss Campbell – författare

Acclaimed writer and literary critic Ellen Prentiss Campbell's debut novel is a moving, intimate story inspired by an unusual chapter in the history of the Bedford Springs Hotel in southern Pennsylvania. During the summer of 1945, the resort served as the detainment center for the Japanese ambassador to Berlin, his staff, and their families. The novel tells Hazel Shaw s story as a young Quaker woman working at the hotel among the Japanese, and the further story of the reverberating lifelong consequences of that experience. The final events of the war challenge Hazel s beliefs about enemies and friends, victory and defeat, love and loyalty. In the ensuing years she remains haunted by memories. Long after the end of the war, an unexpected encounter brings Hazel back to the hotel and she must confront her past, come to terms with her present life, and determine her future. Like the precious bowl she is given, broken centuries before and mended with golden glue, Hazel comes to understand that even that which is broken is beautiful.

Love is necessary but not easy in these stories of love's joys and challenges, regrets and uncertainties. Complicated people fall in and out of love, care for each other, delight each other, disappoint each other, hurt each other, yearn for each other. Campbell tells of all sorts of love: young love, lost love, love found perhaps too late, family love, love between friends. Her writing has been praised for its realism and grace. These untraditional love stories illustrate that love is essential, but not for the faint of heart.

Frieda's Song, a novel, is inspired by renowned psychiatrist Frieda Fromm-Reichmann. Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1935, she came to the Chestnut Lodge Sanatorium in Rockville, Maryland. Frieda worked there for the rest of her life, establishing the Lodge's reputation for innovative treatment of mental illness, dying in her custom-built cottage on the grounds under mysterious circumstances in 1957. Decades later, psychotherapist Eliza Kline and her teenage son Nick live in Frieda's Cottage, next door to the closed and abandoned hospital. As told by Frieda, Eliza, and Nick, the novel explores the tension between love and work, the strength and limits of relationship, and what healers must do to heal themselves. Frieda's Song is a tale of the way history and chance, and the work and people we love, shape our lives-and how the past is always present, haunting us.