Life Is A Foreign Language

About the Book

When she surprises her husband making love to another woman in the home NINA BROCHARD has shared with him for thirty-seven years, she has reached her limit. After years of struggling with his infidelities, this final betrayal prompts her to leave her native France and everything familiar and dear. She settles in Southwest Florida where she owns a house and starts a long and grueling journey toward self-discovery and growth to realize her full potential as a woman. But more than anything she wants to heal and find peace. At 59 she is an experienced psychologist, secure in her professional environment, while on the other hand she struggles with her badly damaged self-image as a woman. Nina's adult, headstrong daughter LILLIAN rejects the truth that her father has been a pathological womanizer and persists in believing that Nina has fabricated the story. Lillian threatens to refuse Nina contact with Morgan and Natalie, her twin granddaughters. Facing this menace Nina is prepared to go to any length to prevent such a rift.

Pediatrician MICHAEL HAMILTON, 61, has dealt with his shattered past. Michael is head of a thriving walk-in clinic, a skilled gardener and a passionate rose grower¥every woman's dream of the ideal man. He is divorced, a father and grandfather.

Through Michael's positive influence Nina learns to laugh again. As two adults who both have been through loss and suffering, Nina and Michael progress with slow steps in their togetherness as fellow travelers. With Michael she learns to trust and to enjoy life. Hope is born as Michael offers Nina a part-time job as counselor in his clinic. She is happy to accept, elated that she is wanted, that she can still be useful.

Michael is considerate of Nina's feelings. Patiently he stands by Nina's side, helps her face the pains of growing. He coaxes and cajoles. Little by little Nina starts unlocking doors to her agonizing past of abuse.

About the Author

Rayne was born in Helsinki, Finland, and grew up in a multilingual home. After graduating from college, she studied psychology at the University of Helsinki. In 1967, she moved to Geneva, Switzerland with her then husband and their two small children.

As clinical psychology and experienced public speaker she worked close to thirty years in a multinational company as addictions counselor with responsibility for their subsidiaries in most European countries. In this job, she facilitated workshops, developed educational programs, wrote two non-fiction books, co-authored a film script and lectured on chemical dependence.

From early childhood, Rayne read; the American classics, the French, the Russian, modern American literature, poetry. Since early retirement she has been writing and taken different courses and workshops in creative writing. Rayne is active in critic groups, Writers' Village University and a member of Florida Writers' Association.

Rayne didn't read the one book that made her want to become a writer. With her education and experience as a psychologist she writes about real people for real people about those painful life situations that are talked about in hushed tones. She shows her readers that no matter how bad a situation may seem, there is a way out; the prerequisite is the desire to change. If asked why she writes, she says it's because she cannot not write; writing is a passion. Since her second husband passed away after twenty-five wonderful years she writes full-time and lives both in Geneva, Switzerland and Florida.

Her second novel is in its final stages of editing, and she is hard at work on her third book.