From Publishers Weekly
The mother of the bride gets her own happy ending in this double-barreled romance by Eagle (The Last Good Man). As the novel begins, Camille Delonga, popular sculptor with a musician ex and an ill mother, is enjoying the wedding of the child of one of her best friends and wondering why anyone would go to the trouble and expense of hosting such a large nuptials. Little does she know that her daughter, Jordan, and the son of her uptight, pretentious friend Bridget are soon to make an announcement of their own. She surprises herself by throwing herself into the preparations and enjoying the planning for the fairy-tale occasion; even her mother, Rosemary, in treatment for cancer, enjoys hand-crafting the dress that Jordan is to wear, not to mention flirting with the chauffeur of the vintage limo hired to drive the kids to the ceremony. But all this reminds Camille of her own bare-bones wedding and stormy marriage to the charming but unreliable Native American Creed Burke, Jordan's father, who, informed by Jordan of her upcoming ceremony, appears on the scene to do what he can to help. Camille and Creed find that there was fault on both sides and that each has mellowed they also discover that they still feel sparks, but does Camille dare to trust Creed again? The dialogue is choppy and the pacing uneven, but the second-time-around romance between Camille and Creed rings true, and the wedding-preparation details are frosting on the cake.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Camille Delonga has her hands more than full with her daughter's upcoming wedding, her mother's illness, and her best friend's divorce. The last thing she needs is her footloose ex-husband in her life. But when she walks into her kitchen one morning and finds the coffee brewing and a black Stetson on the table, she knows that Creed Burke is back in town and maybe back in her life. Emotionally compelling, poignant, and heartwarming, this multilayered, intergenerational novel focuses on the themes of commitment, family, and love, skillfully addressing serious issues with a gentle touch. Sure to please her many romance fans, it will also garner new readers for Eagle within the growing market for women's fiction. Eagle (You Never Can Tell) is a popular and respected writer in the genre, has won two RITA awards, and lives in the Minneapolis area. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Camille attends the elaborate wedding of college friend Bridget's daughter and is thankful that her daughter, Jordan, has always said that she wants a simple ceremony. Camille, divorced from her Native American husband, supports herself through her sculpture. Bridget has lived the perfect country-club lifestyle with a husband and two children, but through it all they have remained friends. Then, after the big wedding, it seems that they might become family when Jordan and Bridget's son discover one another and true love, but plans for a simple wedding become an old dream as reality becomes increasingly complicated. Into this chaos enters Creed Burke, a country-western troubadour and Camille's ex-husband, who has brought his band back to Minnesota so that he can give his daughter away. Camille and Creed at first remember only the bad times, but as the wedding draws near, good memories surface. A sweet story about friendship, family, and the surprising changes weddings can put in motion. Patty Engelmann
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
Mom, Dad, I'm getting married.What do you do when your daughter tells you the big news? If you're Camille Delonga, you fight the urge to go lie down for a year or so ... and then you do what any self-respecting mother of the bride would -- you march right out and buy a sky-high stack of bridal magazines. Once upon a Wedding In award-winning author Kathleen Eagle's astonishing and warm new novel, we see just what happens to Camille, her family, and her friends when her beautiful and young daughter, Jordan, speaks those unforgettable words. After all, weddings are a time of unbelievable joy, a few tender tears -- and sometimes one huge headache. So Camille ignores the thought that her baby is simply too young to take such a big step and throws herself into action. There are flower arrangements to be chosen, favors to be lovingly created by her own two hands ... and lives to be put in order. And one of those disorganized lives belongs to her irrepressible, irresponsible, and somehow still irresistibleex-husband.When they were younger -- as young as Jordan is now -- Camille loved Creed Burke with all her heart and soul. This passionate Lakota swept her off her feet and right to the justice of the peace. Their wedding had been hurried, private ... nothing like the extravaganza their daughter is now planning.Creed is a musician who never seems to stay in one place long enough. Yet his wanderlust has never quite quenched his and Camille's passion for each other or his love for their daughter. But it did unravel their marriage. Now after years of cordial and casual, Camille finds that Creed is invading every aspect of her life. When she comes down for breakfast, he's sitting at the table helping himself to coffee. And when she goes out on the town with her girlfriends, he's sure to show up and ask her for a long, slow dance. Slowly but surely, Creed is weaving himself back into the fabric of her life. And their daughter's upcoming wedding brings back so many tender, tempting, and confusing memories of their own fiery union.Her two best girlfriends aren't much help. "Maybe it'll all work out," says gentle Ellie, a not-so-closet romantic who is clearly hoping for a reconciliation. "Don't trust him!" warns Bridget. But can you really trust someone whose husband has just stormed out of the house? As for Camille's own mother, Rosie, who is facing a serious illness and still has an expectant gleam in her eye and a soft spot in her heart for her ex-son-in-law, she declares Life's too short to pass up another shot at happiness.So when the big day arrives Camille realizes there is only one answer: follow her heart. But where will it take her?Kathleen Eagle has written an extraordinary story, filled with the complexity of female friendships, the tempestousness of the mother-daughter relationship, and the power of everlasting love. Anyone who has ever been a mother, daughter, friend, or lover will never forget Once upon a Wedding.
About the Author
Born in Virginia and raised in New England, bestselling author Kathleen Eagle set aside a gratifying seventeen-year teaching career on a North Dakota Indian reservation to become a full-time novelist. The Lakota Sioux heritage of her husband -- and thus of their three children -- has inspired many of her stories. Among her other honors, she has received a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times, the Midwest Fiction Writer of the Year Award, and Romance Writers of America's prestigious RITA Award. Library Journal named The Night Remembers one of the five best romances of the year. With more than thirty books in print, Kathleen takes great pleasure in reading letters from readers who tell her that her books have tugged at their heartstrings, entertained, inspired, and even enlightened them. You may write to her c/o Midwest Fiction Writers, P.O. Box 24107, Edina, MN 55424-0107
Once Upon A Wedding FROM THE PUBLISHER
Mom, Dad, I'm getting married.
What do you do when your daughter tells you the big news? If you're Camille Delonga, you fight the urge to go lie down for a year or so ... and then you do what any self-respecting mother of the bride would — you march right out and buy a sky-high stack of bridal magazines.
Once upon a Wedding In award-winning author Kathleen Eagle's astonishing and warm new novel, we see just what happens to Camille, her family, and her friends when her beautiful and young daughter, Jordan, speaks those unforgettable words. After all, weddings are a time of unbelievable joy, a few tender tears — and sometimes one huge headache. So Camille ignores the thought that her baby is simply too young to take such a big step and throws herself into action. There are flower arrangements to be chosen, favors to be lovingly created by her own two hands ... and lives to be put in order. And one of those disorganized lives belongs to her irrepressible, irresponsible, and somehow still irresistibleex-husband.When they were younger — as young as Jordan is now — Camille loved Creed Burke with all her heart and soul. This passionate Lakota swept her off her feet and right to the justice of the peace. Their wedding had been hurried, private ... nothing like the extravaganza their daughter is now planning.Creed is a musician who never seems to stay in one place long enough. Yet his wanderlust has never quite quenched his and Camille's passion for each other or his love for their daughter.
But it did unravel their marriage. Now after years of cordial and casual, Camille finds that Creed is invading every aspect of her life. When shecomes down for breakfast, he's sitting at the table helping himself to coffee. And when she goes out on the town with her girlfriends, he's sure to show up and ask her for a long, slow dance.Slowly but surely, Creed is weaving himself back into the fabric of her life. And their daughter's upcoming wedding brings back so many tender, tempting, and confusing memories of their own fiery union.
Her two best girlfriends aren't much help. "Maybe it'll all work out," says gentle Ellie, a not-so-closet romantic who is clearly hoping for a reconciliation. "Don't trust him!" warns Bridget. But can you really trust someone whose husband has just stormed out of the house? As for Camille's own mother, Rosie, who is facing a serious illness and still has an expectant gleam in her eye and a soft spot in her heart for her ex-son-in-law, she declares Life's too short to pass up another shot at happiness.
So when the big day arrives Camille realizes there is only one answer: follow her heart. But where will it take her?
Kathleen Eagle has written an extraordinary story, filled with the complexity of female friendships, the tempestousness of the mother-daughter relationship, and the power of everlasting love. Anyone who has ever been a mother, daughter, friend, or lover will never forget Once upon a Wedding.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
The mother of the bride gets her own happy ending in this double-barreled romance by Eagle (The Last Good Man). As the novel begins, Camille Delonga, popular sculptor with a musician ex and an ill mother, is enjoying the wedding of the child of one of her best friends and wondering why anyone would go to the trouble and expense of hosting such a large nuptials. Little does she know that her daughter, Jordan, and the son of her uptight, pretentious friend Bridget are soon to make an announcement of their own. She surprises herself by throwing herself into the preparations and enjoying the planning for the fairy-tale occasion; even her mother, Rosemary, in treatment for cancer, enjoys hand-crafting the dress that Jordan is to wear, not to mention flirting with the chauffeur of the vintage limo hired to drive the kids to the ceremony. But all this reminds Camille of her own bare-bones wedding and stormy marriage to the charming but unreliable Native American Creed Burke, Jordan's father, who, informed by Jordan of her upcoming ceremony, appears on the scene to do what he can to help. Camille and Creed find that there was fault on both sides and that each has mellowed they also discover that they still feel sparks, but does Camille dare to trust Creed again? The dialogue is choppy and the pacing uneven, but the second-time-around romance between Camille and Creed rings true, and the wedding-preparation details are frosting on the cake. (July) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Camille Delonga has her hands more than full with her daughter's upcoming wedding, her mother's illness, and her best friend's divorce. The last thing she needs is her footloose ex-husband in her life. But when she walks into her kitchen one morning and finds the coffee brewing and a black Stetson on the table, she knows that Creed Burke is back in town and maybe back in her life. Emotionally compelling, poignant, and heartwarming, this multilayered, intergenerational novel focuses on the themes of commitment, family, and love, skillfully addressing serious issues with a gentle touch. Sure to please her many romance fans, it will also garner new readers for Eagle within the growing market for women's fiction. Eagle (You Never Can Tell) is a popular and respected writer in the genre, has won two RITA awards, and lives in the Minneapolis area. [Previewed as It Must Be Love in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/02.] Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
From Eagle (The Last Good Man, 2001, etc.): Lonely mother of a bride-to-be wonders about her ex. Seems love is in the air, now that Camille DeLonga has an unexpected wedding to plan, her beautiful daughter Jordan being engaged to handsome James Mayfield. Camille can't find anything to disapprove of: James is charming, responsible, hard-working, and thirty. Too old for seven-years-younger Jordan? Maybe. Camille muses ruefully over her own failed marriage to Creed Burke, Jordan's part-Indian father, not so sure now that divorcing him was absolutely necessary. They did love each other, but living together just didn't work, and each has done well since they parted ways: Camille is a successful sculptor, Creed a popular guitarist whose country-western band, Only The Lonely, will play at the wedding. That's one less detail to worry about as plans become more complicated by the minute. Camille's best friend Bridget, a paragon of well-off suburban womanhood, is better at this sort of thing, but Camille can do without Bridget's bossiness. And Camille's mother Rosemary is suffering quietly through her cancer treatments; the plucky old lady isn't going to let them stop her from enjoying her granddaughter's wedding. Minor decisions seem major as time ticks away: Should they go for lattice panels with fairy lights as decorations? How about curly willow in floor pots? And about that cake . . . Camille balks when she finds that a tiered wedding cake costs upward of a thousand. Dissuaded by more experienced friends from baking it herself, Camille forges on, suddenly ready to spend more than a little money on a classy, sexy suit. No dowdy mother-of-the-bride chiffon get-ups for her . . . after all, she'llbe dancing with Creed. But she almost misses the ceremony, until the cake man gets her to the church on time-in a bakery truck. Never mind the newlyweds: this slight though poignant romance keeps the emotional reunion of the older lovers at its heart.
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