What does a woman do when she loves her children, her husband and the life they have together, yet feels unhappy? This is the question that Lena Harrison Spencer asks in Searching for Tina Turner. Lena is a woman in her mid-fifties who confronts the hard truths of what it means to have it all and still find oneself unfulfilled. She determines that what she needs is the strength to say no to all that is extraneous in her life, and Tina Turner becomes the icon from whose story she derives strength, even as everyone else tells her she’s crazy for giving up her cashmere cocoon. Searching for Tina Turner’s themes are transformation, new beginnings and reinvention.

Ironically, after my divorce in 2003, I discovered several friends were considering divorce. Our discussions focused on what comes next after a long-term marriage ends, especially when a woman is in her fifties. I wondered how women get back on track. In 2004, Tina Turner’s “All the Best” album went platinum in the U.S., and she was everywhere—on the news, in the papers and on TV shows. I began to think about a character who, though she doesn’t experience physical abuse, could be inspired by Ms. Turner’s resolve and knowledge that everything needed for success was within her.

It’s my hope that Lena inspires readers to think about their own lives and the possibilities for change at any age. Midlife characters are the focus of my novels because I want to dispel the myths of being “over the hill.” I want “baby boomers” to have strong, sexy, and determined characters that they can relate to.

Searching for Tina Turner was selected by Essence Magazine as the January 2010 Book Club Pick and recommended as a must read in the “Live Well Every Day” column in Women’s Day Magazine (February, 2010).

Kate Maruska of San Francisco Book Review (May 10, 2010) calls the novel “. . . inspiring, sexy, and an absolute and unequivocal delight to read.”