Brave Enough for Happy Ever After?

 

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It’s that time of year again, when pundits come up with lists of the most important love stories of all time…You’ll often find these make the grade:

Romeo and Juliet (1597) by William Shakespeare

Anna Karenina (1877) by Leo Tolstoy

Doctor Zhivago (1957) by Boris Pasternak

Love Story (1970) by Erich Segal

The Notebook (1996) by Nicholas Sparks

Bridges of Madison County (1992) Robert James Waller

Cold Mountain (1997) Charles Fraizer

The Great Gatsby(1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

What do they have in common, dear readers? Here’s my list:

1.They are written by men

2. Things don’t end well.

Now, let’s consider:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813)

Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Bronte

Gone With The Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell

Yes. Written by women, and.... everybody gets to survive. Even the heroine of problematic Gone With the Wind is left with the Pandora’s Box gift of hope. 

Why are there so many modern Jane Austen variations? So many sequels to popular HEA (Happy Ever After) romances? Why does Lizzy solve mysteries and the Bennet sisters battle zombies? 

Because romantic happy ever afters are not dead ends of grief and regret (and, as in those crazy kids Romeo and Juliet: bad timing).  

Happy Ever Afters leave us to imagine the future. Did the lovers make good parents? How did they handle the slings and arrows of life? Did they grow stronger together? In short, were they brave enough for their Happy Ever After? 

So… give me Jane Austen’s Emma and and Lizzy. Give me Charlotte’s indomitable Jane, and Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Rosalind and Portia.  They are brave enough to last through a long and wonderful life with their heroes.

New Release - Karma Nation

My family and I lived for fifteen years in a mixed-race neighborhood, with African-Americans, whites and Latinos, in Denver, Colorado. I had the pleasure of interacting with and exploring my neighbors’ experiences and views of America.

As an initiated Hindu Vaishnava priest, I was also active in Interfaith circles and spoke at various churches and conferences. This resulted in friendships with black pastors and inspired me to seek a deeper understanding of African-American history and spirituality. It is these experiences that led me to write Karma Nation.

Presented as a literary romance, Karma Nation follows the arc of two characters: Sam DeVon Johnson, a proud young black man, and Chantley Armstrong, a white American woman who grew up in an ashram in India.

The intense feelings aroused by a chance encounter in Boulder, Colorado suggest that they share a relationship from previous lives.

Chantley sees the world through the eyes of karma. “Everyone acts according to their karma,” she says, “maybe even entire nations.”

Deeply concerned with American injustice, racism and militarism, he asks, “What can you say about a country that starts its history with a slavery and a genocide? What kind of karma is that?”

Discovering that they may have been lovers at a plantation in South Carolina during the antebellum period, they journey through the South, visiting places and people connected to America’s troubled past and uncertain present.

As they fall deeper in love, their travel exposes conflicts whose origins neither is able to explain. They locate their plantation near Charleston, South Carolina, but its exploration reveals a shocking truth about the real nature of their relationship—one that makes them question who they are, their deep-seated beliefs and the meaning of love.

Karma Nation is, in short, an exploration of American cultural and racial attitudes as seen through the ethos of Hinduism. It is also the engaging story of two quirky characters who, having to overcome their own issues, grow towards maturity and love. I invite all of you to enjoy this book.

Mohan Ashtakala is the author of The Yoga Zapper, published by Books We Love. 

www.mohanashtakala.com

www.bookswelove.com