All Your Pretty Dreams

When everything you planned goes south there is only one thing left: heed the call to come home-- even if it involves the polka.

Just because Jonny Knobel hasn't touched the accordion for years means nothing to his father and his beloved polka band. After years in the city small-town Minnesota whiplashes Jonny until he runs into the college girls doing field-work next door. The mysteriously rude Isabel Yancey, the crew chief, arrives with her own fresh heartache. Can two such different people attract?

Jonny is trying to break away from his high school sweetheart who he married at 19, when he meets Isabel, a graduate student involved in a study of bees. They couldn't be more different in their ideals and dreams yet, just like Elizabeth and Darcy in Pride & Prejudice, something draws them together.

"The beauty of this book is its originality, and its sheer inability to be categorized, which, in today's world of cookie-cutter books, is a good thing! It's a romance, with its lovers troubled and conflicted and struggling with their feelings, but ultimately, wonderfully in love. It's a coming-of-age story, with characters young as well as old doing so! It's a story of family and values, both not necessarily going hand in hand … and more than anything, love – in all of its variations and dimensions.

Lise McClendon's stories are unique and inventive … no traditional formulas for her, thank you very much. Her dialogue is witty, her characters multi-dimensional, and her locales so well defined that the visuals replay in your head long after you lay the book down. As with her previous books, ALL YOUR PRETTY DREAMS is a joy to read."
-- Goodreads review

Book Description

Combining the star-crossed lovers of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice with the quirky characters of Anne Tyler, the world of Red Vine, Minnesota comes to life: a rich milieu of confrontation, betrayal, humiliation, laughter, and redemption, as Jonny plays Bruce Springsteen, James Brown, and the 'She Likes Kielbasa' polka on his grandfather's accordion. What does a draftsman from the Twin Cities, born into a cheesy polka band, have in common with a prickly, ambitious scientist who has seen the world? And just how badly does she want him to breach her defenses?

A story about second chances and the laws of attraction, this is a New Adult novel featuring twenty-somethings in search of a fresh start. Romance, humor, and the heartache of growing up make All Your Pretty Dreams a unique journey through the hearts and minds of young adults searching for the keys to happiness in a complicated world.

About the Author

Lise McClendon has published eight previous novels, including Blackbird Fly and Jump Cut (written as Rory Tate.) Her writing has been praised as "a lyrical, often humorous style." Bestselling author Michael Connelly called her writing "a richly detailed story that quite simply gets to your heart." Her love of family dynamics and the mysterious ties that bind us together continue to inform her fiction.

"Lise McClendon expertly probes the mystery of human desires" -- Michael Connelly