Synopses & Reviews
Tears and Tequila is a story of love, loss, friendship, courage, and most of all, renewal; it tells of the healing that happens when you become part of a community in which everybody is missing someone.
Linda Schreyer is an award-winning television/screenwriter. She held staff writing positions on General Hospital, Port Charles, Sunset Beach (winning a Writers Guild Award nomination) and The Bold and the Beautiful; co-wrote the television movies A Place at the Table (receiving The Christopher Award and an Ollie Award) and A House of Secrets and Lies; wrote the screenplay, Ohmigod! for Touchstone Productions and was sent to Moscow by Sony Pictures Television International to teach Russian writers to write for serial television.
Jo-Ann Lautmans name is synonymous with bereavement in Los Angeles. Former Director of the Bereavement Program at Stephen S. Wise Temple, she went on to found OUR HOUSE, a renowned grief support center based on the premise that grievers need understanding, support, and connection. Jo-Ann and her award-winning work have been featured in, among others publications, People, Time Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily News and more.
Review
A big-hearted novel informed by the authors compassion and real-life experience in the field of grief,
Tears and Tequila is chockablock with humor, hope, and the promise of consolation.
-- Leah Hager Cohen, author, The Grief of Others
Linda Schreyer and Jo-Ann Lautman have created a world that you want to inhabit in Tears and Tequila. Yes, it's about grief, but that is overtaken by love, redemption and rebirth - and a lot of laughter!
-- Bethany Rooney, television director
This novel about love, loss and renewal will make you laugh, cry and invest in the lives portrayed. With compassion and a light hand which only true understanding can provide, the authors impart important life lessons on how to cope with grief and find a new path to happiness.
-- Edie Lutnick Co-Founder and President, The Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund
Tears and Tequila is a page-turning story filled with unique characters, whose adventures reveal the true nature of grief: painful and sad, yes, but also marked by humor, irreverence and, ultimately, transformation.
-- Hope Edelman, Motherless Daughter
At some point in our lives all of us will be forced to endure grief. Tears and Tequila eloquently and humorously portrays the agony that we must deal with to come to terms with the finality of death. There truly is a light at the end of the tunnel and this special book beautifully depicts this.
-- Melissa Rivers
Joey Lerner is long overdue for reinvention and restoration. Readers will love Linda Schreyer and Jo-Ann Lautman's Joey, and her bittersweet and often humorous journey, As Joey goes from handyperson to grief group counselor in a rundown learning center called "Oasis," she finds refuge, love and ultimately her own path.
-- Leora Krygier, author, When She Sleeps
Linda Schreyer and Jo-Ann Lautman have succeeded in creating a page-turner of a novel about youthful widows and widowers without succumbing to mind numbing stereotypes and outdated stage theories. Set in a magical realm called Oasis, where grievers come to heal and grow, the grief group members infuse the book with vitality and their own unique voices as they share their pain, sorrow and even some light-hearted fun. Tears and Tequila, takes readers on the roller coaster that is grief, while reminding us that human beings can learn to live, love and thrive after untimely loss.
-- Lauren Schneider LCSW
Synopsis
Joey Lerner has been running, from place to place and job to job. Now, at 32, shes running from her home in New York City, where the last surviving member of her family has died, to Los Angeles, where she hopes to start over. Never one to follow the rules or take the obvious path, and thanks to her grandfather's hands-on training, Joey gets herself hired as the handyperson at a funky community center owned by an Australian surfer. Soon, the job of leading a Grief Group of young widows and widowers falls into her lap. The problem is - Joey hasnt yet healed from her own losses. Over the next nine months Joey and the Grief Group journey from death to life, together and alone. Along the way, Joey discovers the work she was born to do.
Tears and Tequila is a story of love, loss, friendship, courage and, most of all, renewal; it tells of the healing that happens when you become part of a community in which everybody is missing someone.