Lois J. Funk

LOIS J. FUNK was born and raised in the Midwest but has traveled extensively outside the U.S. From lifetime journals, she gleans details of childhood and travel experiences and incorporates them in her nostalgic writings. Below are the individual synopses of her books:

MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW critique of BEYOND THE BRIGHT LIGHTS:

From James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief Midwest Book Review, May 2022:

I'm very pleased to announce that the May 2022 issue of our online book review magazine "Small Press Bookwatch" features a review of "Beyond the Bright Lights".

http://www.midwestbookreview.com/sbw/may_22.htm#travel The Travel Shelf

Critique: An ideal and entertaining 'armchair traveler' read, and with a text that often resembles a free verse form of prose, "Beyond the Bright Lights: When Luxury Was Prime: A Travelogue in Time" is an inherently fascinating travelogue that deftly blends contextual details and the kind of narrative driven storyteller that will engage the reader's total attention. A veritable saga of a travelogue, "Beyond the Bright Lights: When Luxury Was Prime: A Travelogue in Time" is highly recommended as an addition to personal reading lists and community library Contemporary Travelogue collections.

This review will also appear in the Cengage Leaming, Gale interactive CD-ROM series "Book Review Index" which is published four times yearly for academic, corporate, and public library systems.

Additionally, this review will be archived on our Midwest Book Review website for the next five years at http://www.midwestbookreview.com

Get your copy of BEYOND THE BRIGHT LIGHTS - When Luxury Was Prime: A Travelogue in Time and travel along with me, "around the world and halfway back." Go to school with me for a day in Germany; experience the ups and downs of two years of high school as a teenage American in Australia; and bear with me through the tragedy that brought me back home. Then travel with my husband and me to Germany's Oktoberfest; with us and our ten-year-old son around the Pacific rim; and finally, back to Australia, for the 2000 Sydney Olympics and the search for the "old" Australia we loved.

Strap on a pair of roller skates and step back in time with this author as she recalls her favorite memories of the ‘50s in THE CRACKS IN THE SIDEWALK. Or, learn how to write your own personal stories with the help of the writer’s tools in SNAPS, SCRAPS & SNIPPETS OF THE PAST AND PRESENT. I grew up on "once-upon-a-times," "happily-ever-afters," and family talks around the kitchen table, all of which left me with the impression that the world was a perfect place. And. for me, it almost was...

From SNAPS, SCRAPS & SNIPPETS:

I wanted to see the cinder driveway that ran alongside our house, and the garbage pits and hollyhocks that lined the alley behind it. I longed to see pictures of Mom's clotheslines propped up and loaded down with the week's wash; the tricycle my sisters and I took turns riding to the neighborhood park just up the street from our house; and glimpses of my grandma's kitchen where, in the aprons my mother made for her, she taught me how to spell my name while she was baking cherry pies. Those were the details that added color and life to my childhood. But nowhere did I find them recorded on film. So I did the next best thing. I encouraged my mind's camera to come up with mental images that I could translate onto...continued on Page 37 of Snaps, Scraps & Snippets of the Past and Present.

Find inspiration, hope, and humor in LIGHT FOR THE BURNING SOUL:

Convincing the Invincible

After listening intently to the Bible story in which Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law, our pastor's four-year-old daughter carried it a bit further by adding, "But she died later."

I assured her with, "Oh, yes. We all have to die sooner or later."

While most of the kids let the latter thought go right over their heads, one little boy looked directly into my eyes and said, "Well, I'M not going to die - sooner OR later."

Laugh along with eighteen women who reveal the ups and downs of family life in PIECES OF HER MIND:

lost, he doubles back

without asking directions

man behind the wheel

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main street cordoned off

one carload of clowns

heads the wrong way

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tintype portrait

someone's ancestor

with a price

on his head

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For more about the author and her books, please visit her website at http://loisjfunkwritingsof.com, and look for her on Facebook.

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