I am very excited to bring you guys a special edition cover reveal. It is the new Walmart-Exclusive black and white cover edition for While He Was Away by Karen Schreck.
Enjoy!
One year--he'll be gone for one year and then we'll be together again and everything will be back to the way it should be.
The day David left, I felt like my heart was breaking. Sure, any long-distance relationship is tough, but David was going to war--to fight, to protect, to put his life in danger. We can through this, though. We'll talk, we'll email, we won't let anything come between us.
I can be an army girlfriend for one year. But will my sweet, soulful, funny David be the same person when he comes home? Will I? And what if he doesn't come home at all?...
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My Opinion:
I really like this cover. I will admit that I think the original version is very pretty and much more genre appropriate. I am not saying that this cover is in any way inappropriate for YA, but it kind of makes you think the story will be more Adult or New Adult. It may actually be more New Adult since it is covering the military which means the characters must be at least eighteen, so it may be one of those inbetweener genres. I also really like that they didn't show all of the cover models faces so that they can still be left up to the readers imagination. Overall, great cover.
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While He Was Away Walmart-Exclusive Cover Reveal
and How Inspiration Can Come From Anywhere:
Even a Trip to the Grocery Store and a Handful of Long-Lost Photographs
By Karen Schreck
I sometimes wonder what my mother would say if she knew that her story -- one of the saddest, sweetest love stories I've ever heard -- was retold in a new way in my young adult novel, While He Was Away.
Now Sourcebooks Fire is sharing the story yet again, in a second, exclusive edition, released nation-wide at Walmart. The fact that Sourcebooks believed enough in While He Was Away to bring it to life the first time felt like a much needed confirmation of years of hard work. The fact that they are standing behind my book again in this way... well, it feels like a miracle. I'm truly grateful.
I wonder what my mother would say to this incredible news? I like to think she would be grateful too. I like to think she would be happy. She wanted her story heard after all. So much so that it was one of the last things she told me, just before she died.
One rainy night when I was fourteen, right before cancer left her too ill to talk, let alone drive a car, my mother said, "Come with me. We're going shopping." We drove to the little local market and wandered up and down the aisles, as she threw in a can of tuna, some dishwashing soap, and other little things we didn't need. We paid for these little things. She looked anxious and tired, still she hadn't said a thing; we hadn't spoken a word.
It was only when we were parked in our driveway again that my mother said, "I was married once before when I was very young. He died a hero in WWII."
And that was that. Soon after, she died.
I thought about my mother's mysterious love story for many year. I talked to relatives, found long-lost photographs. The story took seed in me. It flowered into a novel about a young woman whose boyfriend leaves for the Iraq War. In her loneliness, she seeks out a grandmother she's never met, whose first husband died in WWII. She seeks out a character inspired by my mother.
A late night drive, a few words spoken in the dark. Even things as simple as this can inspire a novel.
