Kindle Edition Amazon Cristina Salat Author Site Category:  Relationships Publisher: Green Flame Omnimedia ISBN-10:  1535559020 Type: Fiction Pages: 350 Copyright: Summer 2018 ISBN-13: 9781535559027 Price: $7.77 (eBook) An adventure in friendship, intentional community, sovereignty, love, and all the magic in the world. PARADISE FOUND, book #4 in the 'Gathering The Dreamcatchers' companion novel series, is launching this summer! :) Advance Review E-Copy is FREE from 7/4-7/8...then discounted at $3.33 for the following weeks...until it returns to full price on August 1, 2018. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! Description: After years in messy custody battles with her parents, it’s finally time for 16 &1/2 year old Amelia to create a life of her own...an adventure that takes her to intentional community on a mystical, Northern California apple farm among modern-day, sovereignty movement revolutionaries. It’s true, Amelia would like to help make the world better, but really she’s come to the Esoterica apple farm because one of the revolutionaries just happens to be someone she has feelings for...and it’s never to late to create a happy adulthood for yourself, right? Excerpt Chapter 1: Unsettling America Unsettling America: In interconnected systems, one change anywhere leads to other changes here, there, everywhere. With each choice life spins in new directions creating new possibilities. Amelia Way back when, Janey was not kidding: a piano really is the heaviest piece of furniture in the world to move. The chipped yellow one we'd bought for $25 at a Salvation Army when I was 14 and we were scrambling to furnish our shill San Francisco apartment so Mom could win custody of me, was about a thousand times heavier than my wooden chest of drawers or banged-up trunk of board games and art supplies. My book shelves, in fact — made of unpainted boards screwed together with metal brackets by me and Janey — were sturdy enough to hold more books than easily fit onto the shelves, but with all the books packed into boxes, the pine shelves themselves were so light, on moving day I could just about carry them out of the apartment myself! But I'd been receiving postcards for the past 2½ years along with emails about 'Esoterica,' the new civilization my friend Gabrielle was forming with her friends on an apple orchard tucked between Sonoma County vineyards, redwood forests, and the Northern California coast — a place where people didn't even lock their doors, except at night — and now that I was finally done with court stuff, I was definitely heading there...and though I had no interest in taking more piano lessons like I had when I lived with my father in New York, the funky yellow piano I'd been pounding on throughout our custody battles — which somehow sounded way better than it looked — was definitely coming with me. Though it weighed a ton. When we first bought it, actual movers got hired to bring the old upright with its peeling Hello Kitty, star galaxy, and beer stickers into Mom and Janey's new pale pink apartment, back when efficiency and speed were critical in terms of keeping my fucking father away from me...but now that we can relax, we've just rented a U-Haul to get me and the piano up north and we're doing the moving ourselves. Hoisting the chipped yellow piano up onto blocks so Janey (who is now officially my mother's wife) can screw a sturdy wheel into each corner, it takes all three of us to lift each end of the piano one at a time and wedge blocks underneath with our feet. But once the piano is safely attached to wheels, rolling it across the apartment's hardwood floor isn't hard. Janey backs the U-Haul to the front steps so its extendable metal ramp plus a thick slab of construction plywood lets us avoid having to get the piano down the steps entirely. We just glide it right into the truck on its new little wheels. "So far so good," Janey huffs. She brushes her hands on her jeans. My mother leans against the U-Haul, catching her breath too. "No steps on the other end," I grin. "Gabrielle says there's a wooden walkway right from where you park to the front door!" "Solid wood?" Janey says. "Or slatted wood with spaces in between?" "It'll be fine," I say. I am 16½ years old. The worst parts of my life are over because my birth father is out of the picture now. For good. I have money, a new life to start with Mom's and Janey's permission, and all the time in the world to live it. Even with all the years I got tutored and home-schooled, I took the GED and passed with flying colors, so if going to college is something I want there's Santa Rosa Junior College or Sonoma State University up north where Gabrielle lives...or I might just start learning everything there is to know about her new civilization and growing apples. I don't know what the future will hold, but at least it will be very different from what these last years have been. And that's something. Whatever comes next will be my choice. My mother comes up behind me placing her hands on my shoulders. "This is a moment," she says, pointing me towards the cavernous inside of the U-Haul as Janey clambers up to secure my piano with rope. "Take it in." "Yeah," Janey wipes her brow, giving me the eye. "A piano-moving moment that will hopefully not be repeated any time soon!" In interconnected systems, all things work together. Bees collect nectar and pollen for their own purposes, but in the process wind up pollinating all sorts of flowers, bushes, and trees that benefit species beyond their own.

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Review for LIVING IN SECRET 'Gathering The Dreamcatchers' companion novel #1:

Five Stars *****

I was introduced to this book year 6 in primary school and it became my favourite book for about 2 years and I read it 3 times after that - I loved it every time. It's such a truthful and organic story and it's what first introduced me to the brutality and reality of the world - gay and everythang! *warning - very emotional ending* but I think it's something everyone should read at least once in their life perhaps best in the teenage years but great either way.

I thoroughly enjoyed this work for several reasons Amazon
Review for THE SKIN OF WATER: DEFENDING THE DREAMCATCHERS 'Gathering The Dreamcatchers' companion novel #2:

Five Stars *****

I thoroughly enjoyed this work for several reasons. It took me back to the turmoil of being a teenager: the storm of emotion, hormones, physical changes, sexual desires, the pressure to compare oneself to others, and the struggle for an identity. It beautifully depicts First Nation culture and values and poetically brings them to life, making them protagonists in the novel. Its ending empowers the abused, and creates a new option for the "victim" of violence. Great job Cristina Salat!

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Review for ESOTERICA 'Gathering The Dreamcatchers' companion novel #3:

Five Stars *****

The novel, Living in secret (LIS), which this novel is a follow-up to, was one of my favorite books back when I was just 10 years old. I was very excited to learn, that a follow-up had been written, and started reading it right away. I must admit, my first experience with the book was not very positive. Not wanting to spoil, I will not go into detail of WHY it was a sort of negative impression I got with the book at first, but let's just say, that the way Amelia has been living in between the first and second book, didn't come to my liking, and was not what I expected. Besides that, I expected the whole book to be about Amelia, her mother, and Janey, trying to win custody back, which (spoiler) it is not about. I will not say what the book is about/focused on, you will have to figure that out for yourself. Although of this, I still could not get myself to put the book down, and I finished it within one day. This is because, although it was certainly not what I expected, it was still near perfect! There is no doubt in my mind, that any fan of Living in secret, will enjoy this book! (especially the ending, without spoiling too much ;) ), I highly recommend it to any fan of LIS!