Lilac Mines Audiobook By Cheryl Klein cover art

Lilac Mines

A Novel

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Lilac Mines

By: Cheryl Klein
Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
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Felix Ketay, a 25-year-old Los Angeles dyke, has her foundations shaken when she’s ditched by her pomosexual girlfriend and then gay-bashed on the streets of West Hollywood.

Felix’s old-school lesbian aunt, Anna Lisa Hill, ran away from home in 1965 at age 19 and ended up in Lilac Mines, a small town in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills with a small but tight-knit butch/femme community.

When Felix joins her aunt in Lilac Mines hoping to discover a place of respite, Anna Lisa proves stand-offish, so Felix devotes herself to investigating the town’s 100-year-old mystery: the disappearance of 16-year-old Lilac Ambrose in the mine shafts that run beneath the mountain.

Felix learns that finding an authentic history is never easy, but Lilac Mines - with its abandoned mines, unknowable secrets, and the occasional quirky-cute thrift store employee - might not be such a bad place to try.

About the author: Cheryl Klein is a shameless Angeleno, quiet pescatarian, and shameful tabloid reader. She lives in Los Angeles where she is West Coast director of Poets & Writers, Inc.

©2009 Cheryl Klein (P)2013 Audible, Inc. Fiction Genre Fiction LGBTQ+ Studies Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction

Critic reviews

“Klein’s characters are compelling, one and all.” (San Diego Union-Tribune)
"A quirky, quickly paced story of a young woman ending a relationship with a young woman then developing a relationship with another young woman: herself. Klein’s first book, The Commuters, was a fine debut. Second books aren’t necessarily as good. In this case, it’s better." (Noel Alumit, Frontiers)
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Cheryl Klein's delicious novel about three generations of lesbian women in California combines a little history, a little mystery, and a little romance.

This book opens like a million before it—somebody gets dumped. Escaping a crushing breakup with her girlfriend and a sexual assault, Felix leaves L.A. to stay with her aunt in a small town called Lilac Mines.

From there, the narrative switches between the present day and the 1960s. There is a tension between Felix and her aunt. Will we find the clues in her aunt’s past to why she is treating Felix so gruffly?

I loved the small-town lesbian history and stories—I completely forgot that this book is fiction—Lilac Mines feels like such a real place.

A Little History, A Little Mystery, and Romance

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This unsatisfying tale is told in mostly flash backs as three generations of lesbian lovers is explored ,the story telling itself is poetic and beautiful at times ,and maybe that's enough to recommend this book .Good narration, good story of old values and young enthusiasm,the disappointing thing was that it ends with a wimpier not a bang.

Flash Back

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