Courtney Yasmineh is known to many as an accomplished singer songwriter, but soon her name may become as well known to a whole new set of fans who pick up and read her first novel, A Girl Called Sidney.
Much of this coming of age novel is set in a small, cold northern town much like Grand Marais. With her older brother off to college and her parents locked in a bitter divorce, Sidney, a Chicago girl who lived with her mother and visiting father in a small lake cabin in northern Minnesota for the summers, decides to stay in the cabin and attend her senior year of high school. The cabin doesn’t have even modest creature comforts of home, like running water or a bathroom in the winter, and Sidney has to endure these inconveniences as she attends a new high school and makes plans for her future. Short on money, lonely, and sometimes overwhelmed, Sidney finds solace in her music, writing and singing songs. She forms a relationship with her first boyfriend, a young miner from Virginia, Minnesota, and finds friendship and companionship at work, and with her 14 senior classmates, and if all fails, her loyal, loving dog Brandy is there to comfort her until one day…
Courtney Yasmineh will be at the Lake Superior Trading Post on July 29 from 1 to 2:30 p.m. to sign copies of her book. If you would like to meet her and learn more about this author/singer/songwriter who was born in Tower Soudan, please stop by. Courtney will also be performing at the North Shore Music Festival, an event hosted to raise money to provide music lessons to kids who otherwise couldn’t afford to pay for them.
Gibson House, who publishes novels by musicians and other artists with strong connections to music, produced A Girl Called Sidney. This is the first in a four-book series about the life of Sidney, so expect to see more from Yasmineh, who writes in a simple, easy to read style that is well-paced, filled with raw emotion, energy, and the angst all teenagers feel regardless of their living situations.
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