CHRISTY HOLLOWAY at Books Inc. Palo Alto

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Books Inc. Palo Alto proudly welcomes local author Christy Holloway for a celebration of her book Whispers Across A Sea!

Whispers Across A Sea is Christina Holloway’s debut novel. Researched and written over a ten year period, the author uses historical records and family letters to recreate the story of her ancestors.

In 1920, Ireland stands on the brink of civil war. Lucie returns to her familial home to settle the estate, where she uncovers an abundance of handwritten letters—a lifetime’s worth of cherished memories and guarded secrets between her mother and aunts—as well as her grandfather’s diary. As she reads through her findings, Lucie begins to wonder just how well she knew her relatives and the circumstances of their lives. Norah, a close childhood friend and the daughter of a former family servant, helps her work through the notes, and their conversations remind Lucie that she and Norah lived in very different worlds. Norah is Irish; Lucie is Anglo-Irish. As the two women look back into the past, it becomes evident that Norah has always known more about Lucie’s life than Lucie ever understood of Norah’s. And Lucie realizes that she had been unaware of the disquiet in Ireland’s streets—but then again, the elder members of her family, so completely involved in their own lives, didn’t appear to notice either…

Whispers Across A Sea is a compelling novel that traces three generations of Lucie’s Anglo-Irish family as they navigate the nuances of life in their adopted country of Ireland. Within the home, the family’s Irish servants make sure the lives of the Youngs remain comfortable while silently observing their employers’ detachment from the realities of life in Ireland—a country where a lengthy, violent, and divisive struggle is beginning. How long will the Youngs be able to close their eyes to the shifting world outside their door?

Based on a true story, Christina Holloway’s carefully researched and vividly imagined historical novel opens a window into Ireland in the late 1800s—a time of vast privilege, inequality, turmoil, and change.

Christina was born in England in 1938. Her family came to live with her American mother’s family in California to escape the blitz when she was two and a half years old. Her maternal grandmother, Lucie, fired Christina’s childhood imagination with colorful stories and a house full of possessions from her young life in Ireland. An early reader, Christina developed a curiosity for family history and backstory. Inheriting her grandmother’s treasures, that included personal letters, photos, art and a diary, sowed the seeds for her debut historical novel, Whispers Across A Sea. She attended UC Berkeley, bicycled through Europe at eighteen and skied on the Cal Ski Team before marrying and moving to Washington DC. There she graduated from George Washington University as a young mother. For fifty years Christina has been a leader in environmental education and land conservation in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her passion for environmental activism began in April 1970, marching on the first Earth Day pushing a newborn in a stroller. Since then, she has made contributions to the field of conservation, founding The Environmental Volunteers, and as Executive Director of the Trust for Hidden Villa. She served on the boards of The Peninsula Open Space Trust, the Yosemite Association and Yosemite Fund for over two decades. In 2010 she played a key role in the complex merger that created The Yosemite Conservancy. In 1979-80 she served as President of the Junior League of Palo Alto. She received the Duveneck Humanitarian Award from the Trust for Hidden Villa in 1996 and the Lifetimes of Achievement Award from Avenidas in 2016. Christina lives on the Stanford University campus with her professor husband, who founded the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Stanford Business School. They have three children and seven grandchildren.

Host or Publisher Books Inc.