Lisa Mercado-Fernandez writes literary novels of love, loss, and friendship set in the small coastal towns of New England.
I edited Mercado-Fernandez’ debut novel, The Shoebox, and her second and third novels, The Eighth Summer and Holding Onto Hope, both published through Abbott Press.
The Shoebox: It’s 1985, and Peter Michaels—forty-two-year-old rising star of Boston’s architectural world—stumbles upon an old shoebox of mementos from his first sweetheart. Now he is thrown into a tailspin that could cost him his upcoming marriage, his career, and the love of his life.
Under deadline pressure from a career-changing project and caught up in the whirlwind of his fiancée’s wedding plans, Peter desperately tries to locate his lost love, Maddy. Through the latest technology, he finally finds her.
However, once reunited with her, he is shocked to learn the reason for her long-ago disappearance. And he’s even more shocked to discover why he never knew.
Now his love for his family and belief in his own loyalties stand between him and everything he once had. Eventually, Peter finds himself forced to make the one choice he never thought he could make.
The Eighth Summer: Every summer eight lifelong friends come together on the New Jersey shore to share the adventures of their year and renew their bonds of love and loyalty. . .until one year their summer unexpectedly becomes a season of grief.
As the friends process their sorrow, their bonds are broken and their long-buried secrets revealed. They discover how little they truly know one another.
One by one, they begin to question the bonds that they’ve always believed were the bedrock of their lives. And one by one, they are forced to question their own lives and choices, as well as those of their loved ones.
Will they be torn apart?
Or can they find a way through the collapse of what once held them together, to forge a new and stronger future for them all?
Holding Onto Hope: When Hope and Nicholas rush to the hospital for the birth of their long-awaited twins, they know their most cherished dreams are about to come true.
However, complications after birth endanger Hope’s life, threatening to leave Nicholas alone with two newborn infants he doesn’t know how to care for without their beloved mother at his side.
Nicholas retreats into his memories of life with Hope, from the first time he saw her, through the joys and heartbreaks of pursuing their professional careers, caretaking an elderly father, buying and renovating their ideal home, facing their conflicting spiritual beliefs and finally struggling with infertility. Through it all, Hope and Nicholas discover what love means to them and how lucky they are to have found it in each other.
Can Nicholas, now the father of newborns who need him, ever find the strength to carry on without her?
Or will he be unable to give up holding onto Hope?
Mercado-Fernandez says:
“Is it appropriate for a writer to tell her editor in the second week she loves her? I’m amazed! You have it down to an exact science. I knew from reading your books that you could do that, but you have taken it to another level. Wow! I’m clapping. No amount of money will ever equal what you’ve done for my spirit!”