Thursday July 27
7:00 at Blue Hill Public Library

5 Parker Point Road
Blue Hill, Maine 04614

 

Rom coms, meet cutes, mystery men, courageous women, and the happy endings of today draw a direct line to the words between the covers of Emilie Loring’s romance novels.

With a career spanning 40 years, Emilie Baker Loring saw millions of her books sold during her lifetime. Happy Landings: Emilie Loring’s Life, Writing and Wisdom shares this best-selling author’s uplifting story for the first time. Loring’s books brimmed with intricate plot twists, intense imagery, and page-turning excitement, setting her works apart from the drugstore novels of the early- to mid-20th century. Her oft-quoted phrases are part of the American lexicon.

Her readership has continued long after her passing. Now with generations of readers, Loring’s books have sold more than thirty-seven million copies in a dozen languages. And now Emilie’s own compelling life story is finally told in full.

With never-before-published photographs, privileged access to the Loring family archives, and twenty years of meticulous research, Patti Bender reveals a woman who lived as she wrote, with intelligence, humor, and wisdom.

Emilie Loring lived through two World Wars, a pandemic, the Great Depression, and deep, personal loss with her optimism intact and thirty best-selling novels to show for it.

This is a woman’s story in swiftly changing times for women; a charming story with little-known anecdotes about prominent authors; and the story of a writer in the making, with advice and encouragement for aspiring authors.

 

After two decades of research and a lifetime of reading and re-reading her work, Patti Bender unexpectedly found herself the world’s expert on Emilie Loring. Bender left a thirty-year college teaching career to complete the author’s biography and pursue writing full-time. Her website, The Emilie Loring Collection (available at www.pattibender.com), has become a gathering place for Emilie’s lifetime fans. A native of Tempe, Arizona, Bender earned a B.A. with Phi Beta Kappa honors in English and history at Trinity University, an M.S. at the University of Illinois, and a Ph.D. in human motor control at the University of Southern California. She is married and has two grown children. When she’s not researching or writing, you might find her hiking, cycling, kayaking, gardening, or traveling. She collects interesting rocks, sea glass, and all things Emilie.