Set in the American Southwest, Edna & Luna is the story of two women: a lonely, recently widowed eccentric, and a much younger new age healer. Facing old age and a hysterectomy, Edna, at 70, reminisces and ruminates about her losses as she makes unsuccessful attempts to start a new life. She tries to befriend her hairdresser, her gardener, and a man she meets at a senior dance who makes sexual advances in the swimming pool. Luna, at 35, ridiculed since childhood for her unorthodox gift of healing, has left a violent husband before moving to a local trailer park. Despite Edna’s initial suspicions that Luna is both out of her mind and after her money, their relationship becomes an odyssey filled with unpredictable depths and discoveries for both women.
Industry Reviews
"Edna and Luna is a delight from first sentence to last. One can't help but love both Edna and Luna for all their flaws and quirkiness as well as the tremendous courage it takes to simply navigate the challenges we encounter on this earth. There's humour here, surprising, delicious observations and comments, curious asides; Edna and Luna is feminist, yet never formulaic, and each sentence is precise, luminous. Power's ability to create character, and her command of detail is truly impressive. This is a book where place is both specific and universal-details unique to Phoenix, but with a physicality and relationship to place and circumstance that belongs to us all. There's tenderness, redemption, and wisdom in this book-a simple, quiet, credible healing: what we can give to each other if we would. Powers creates a world you want to stay in, characters you wish you were meeting in your own supermarket, characters you wish were knocking at your door."
Carol Potter, author of Some Slow Bees
"From a crabby widow who runs over people's toes with her grocery cart to a woman who chooses fruit by its vibration, Edna and Luna reminds us that family can be found in the most unlikely people. The developing bond and each woman's curious background definitely make the book difficult to put down."
Tammy Gonzales, Associate Editor, Southwestern American Literature
"Brilliantly observed and poignantly funny, Edna and Luna is the story of two women-a widow and a New Age healer-whose buried pasts and uncertain futures leave them to discover the complexities of love, the gifts of friendship, and, ultimately, the joys of redemption."
Marylee MacDonald, author of Bonds of Love and Blood and Montpelier Tomorrow
"Every sentence bursts with something to be moved by, or marvel at. Two very different women form an improbable friendship: each wants something different out of life; yet through one another, against often absurd odds and never quite in the ways they'd hoped for, each gets what she wants. The southwest of Gleah Powers is particularly akin to the deep south of Flannery O'Connor. Her vision is comic, tragic then comic again in wonderfully truthful, unpredictable twists. Despite taking place in the here and now, we're steeped in a timeless, off-road America where spiritual self-search is acted out in primal, private, highly individual ways, unfiltered by the homogenized fashions and distractions of the so-called larger world."
F.X. Feeney, Critic, LA Review of Books, Author, Orson Welles: Power, Heart & Soul
"A magical odyssey, both internal and external, through the American Southwest as sculpted by Gleah Powers. You will not soon forget either Edna or Luna."
Jillian Lauren, NY Times Bestselling author of Some Girls: My Life in a Harem
"Gleah Powers has an uncanny ability to capture the real, the religious, the natural, and the absurd that is the Southwest into prose. In this novella, she has reached new heights in portraying characters that are perfectly flawed living in a sprawling city amidst an unforgiving, yet magical, Sonoran Desert. Edna and Luna, in the end, is an oasis for the human soul."
John M. Gist, Founding Editor, Red Savina Review
"I fell in love with this novella from the very first sentence. Gleah Powers is an angelic writer, telling the vast, wild story of Edna and Luna with startling economy, sharp tenderness, and searing wit. This is an essential book to guide us through these uncertain times."
Alistair McCartney, author of The End of the World Book
"Gleah Powers is a prose stylist with a gift for conciseness and clarity. Using a well-crafted mix of subtle humour and dramatic tension, she takes the reader through a loving journey of loss, loneliness, ageing, and fulfilment. Meeting Edna and Luna is a literary delight."
Phil Rice, author of Winter Sun: A Memoir of Love and Hospice
