What is Karen Halvorsen Schreck?

Featured at Writers Read: Karen Halvorsen Schreck, author of Broken Ground.

Her entry begins:

I just finished reading Big Little Lies, by Liane Moriarty. I initially picked it up because soon after the New Year, a long-time friend of mine, the actor Jeffrey Nordling, shared that he’d landed a role in the upcoming HBO production of the novel, optioned by, and starring, Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon. “Happy 2016!” I wrote to Jeff when I heard the news. “Right?” he wrote back. He also mentioned that he liked the novel a lot. I trust Jeff’s judgment. Also, I was curious in a rather puerile way. (Will he fit the part?) Plus, I’d just finished reading everything I could get my hands on by the English author, Jojo Moyes. Lots of reasons to dig in. So I did.

I soon traded my curiosity for total absorption. Jeff’s a great actor—of course he’ll fit the part! But Big Little Lies! What a great read! Liane Moriarty! Who knew? A lot of...[read on]

About Broken Ground, from the publisher:

When a young oil rig widow escapes her grief and the Texas Dust Bowl, she discovers a surprising future—and new passion—awaiting her in California in this lyrically written romance by the author of Sing for Me.

Newly married to her childhood sweetheart, twenty-one-year-old Ruth Warren is settling into life in a Depression-era, East Texas oil town. She’s making a home when she learns that her young husband, Charlie, has been killed in an oil rig accident. Ruth is devastated, but then gets a chance for a fresh start: a scholarship from a college in Pasadena, CA. Ruth decides to take a risk and travel west, to pursue her one remaining dream to become a teacher.

At college Ruth tries to fit into campus life, but her grief holds her back. When she spends Christmas with some old family friends, she meets the striking and compelling Thomas Everly, whose own losses and struggles have instilled in him a commitment to social justice, and led him to work with Mexican migrant farmworkers in a camp just east of Los Angeles. With Thomas, Ruth sees another side of town, and another side of current events: the numerous forced deportations without due process of Mexicans, along with United States citizens of Mexican descent.

After Ruth is forced to leave school, she goes to visit Thomas and sees that he has cobbled together a night school for the farmworkers’ children. Ruth begins to work with the children, and establishes deep friendships with people in the camp. When the camp is raided and the workers and their families are rounded up and shipped back to Mexico, Ruth and Thomas decide to take a stand for the workers’ rights—all while promising to love and cherish one another.

Visit Karen Halvorsen Schreck's website.

My Book, The Movie: Broken Ground.

Writers Read: Karen Halvorsen Schreck.

--Marshal Zeringue