Learning To Breathe Again by Tonya Cam
The Coffee Pot Book Club Blog Tour
Learning To Breathe Again by Tonya Cam
Today I’m thrilled to be highlighting Learning To Breathe Again by Tonya Cam, a novel about female friendship set in 1933 Florida. I’ve included the book description and an excerpt from the novel below.
Book Description
Two women. Lives they didn't choose. A friendship that dares them to want more.
Miami, 1933. Mary Simons was supposed to fill her scrapbook with photos of her baby's first smiles, locks of fine hair, and handwritten milestones. Instead, she records respiration rates and temperatures, hoping science can save what love can't. When her baby dies, the future she imagined dies with her.
A thousand miles north, Elena Wagner has spent years trying to bury the girl who nursed her mother and sister through their final days. Silk dresses and a husband who adores her keep the grief at arm's length. But an unplanned pregnancy, and a Depression that won't end, threaten to pull her back into the one role she swore she'd never play again.
A chance encounter at the Chicago World's Fair brings the two women together. When circumstances relocate them both to the sugarcane fields of Depression-era Florida, an unlikely friendship becomes the one thing they can't afford to lose. In a time when women are expected to endure in silence, Mary and Elena must decide: keep performing the lives they're supposed to live, or risk it all for the women they might still become.
A character-driven novel about loss, friendship, and courage. Sometimes the hardest thing isn't holding on. It's learning to breathe again.
For readers of Fiona Davis, Kristina McMorris, Marie Benedict, and Lisa Wingate.
Buy Link:
Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/bzQpRL
This title is available to read on Kindle Unlimited.
Excerpt
This is excerpt number 3 on the blog tour. To read the other excerpts, click the image below.
(Part of Chapter 7…)
She left the Hall of Science with her purse full of pamphlets and her mind full of new questions.
The fair stretched on.
Mary continued past the Good Housekeeping Gardens, the Firestone Building, the Belgian Village. She paused at a twenty-one-story thermometer, made by the Havoline Motor Company, which told her it was seventy degrees.
“Don’t forget to see the babies!” a voice yelled out.
Mary turned. A young man in a tan newsboy cap pointed to a small white building. The sign on top read: INFANT INCUBATORS WITH LIVING BABIES.
“Don’t forget to see the babies!” the young man called out again.
In the six months since Janie’s death, Mary had tried hard not to think much about babies. Even in the Hall of Science, she’d specifically avoided the exhibits on maternity, fetal development, and obstetrics. But the huge sign piqued her curiosity. She paid a quarter, the cost of admission, and entered.
The building was not just an exhibit; it was a hospital. Instead of dioramas and drawings, there were doctors and nurses standing alongside a dozen glass-doored rectangular boxes. Tubes connected to each of the boxes, with large vents at the ceiling that allowed air to flow. Inside each of the boxes were babies. Some housed one. Others contained two. All were impossibly small. The smallest babies Mary had ever seen. Much smaller than Janie had been.
An older man, with white hair, a round stomach, and a thick accent, introduced himself as Dr. Couney.
He addressed the small crowd around him. “We’ve learned that tiny babies aren’t able to breathe regular air like we can. Their lungs can’t handle it. But if we warm the air, make it the perfect humidity, and add just a bit more oxygen, then the air will help their lungs develop, so they can actually figure out how to breathe.”
“That’s all you have to do?” she asked him, once his speech had ended.
The doctor nodded. “We do not save these babies with miracles. We save them with science. When we give them the air that they need, they live.”
Mary’s lower lip trembled. Janie had needed this, but Janie had not had this. For her, it was now too late.
Mary pointed toward an incubator where two babies lay side by side, neither much bigger than her palm. “Do you think they are going to live?”
“Oh yes,” he said. “I’ve saved babies even smaller.”
“But are they going to live long?” What she meant was longer than Janie.
“They should live perfectly normal lives.”
“In the box?”
He laughed. “They should be out in a month and be fine after that.”
Mary couldn’t believe she hadn’t heard of this before. “But how can it be so simple?”
“It’s not simple, it’s science,” he said. “And just imagine how much more we will know in the future.”
His words hurt because of what never would be, but they also filled her with hope. “Maybe there could be a way to speed up lung development in the womb if the doctors know a baby is going to be coming early, so that they won’t be as underdeveloped.”
He nodded. “And maybe figuring that out will end up being as easy as this.”
What a wonderful thing to imagine.
When Mary stepped back outside, the path before her didn’t feel as uncertain.
She spent the rest of the day wandering. Around large lagoons as the Skyride transported passengers high above. Inside the Sears Roebuck building to touch all the clothes she’d only seen in magazines. To the Planetarium, where hundreds of constellations filled the domed sky.
When night arrived, the lights became brighter. The fountains glowed pink, then blue, then gold. Searchlights streamed across the water as music played from the Court of Honor. People laughed. Cameras flashed. Mary couldn’t stop smiling.
Her feet ached as she walked back to the bus.
The driver greeted her at the door. “Think you’re going to be so scared tomorrow?”
She shook her head. “I’m going to be the first one off the bus.” To learn more about incubators and heart valves, ointments and new medications, vitamins and constellations.
Author Bio
Tonya Cam Author
Tonya Cam is a third-generation Floridian, a lifelong collector of Depression-era memorabilia, and a writer drawn to women who are not only surviving. They are becoming.
Learning to Breathe Again is her debut novel and the first book in The Work of Becoming Trilogy. It's the story of two women whose lives collide at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair and whose friendship reshapes them in the sugarcane fields of Clewiston, Florida. It was inspired by her father's memories growing up, and the older brother he lost before he was born.
When she is not writing, she teaches middle school science in Gainesville, Florida. She is also the author of The Complete Guide to Shirley Temple Dolls and Collectibles.
If you love Fiona Davis, Marie Benedict, Lisa Wingate, or Kristina McMorris, you'll love the stories she writes.
Author Links:
Website: https://tonyacamauthor.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tonyacamauthor/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tonyacamauthor/
Threads: https://www.threads.com/@tonyacamauthor
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tonyacamauthor
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Tonya-Cam/author/B0H1L88PPY
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/68474999.Tonya_Cam