Jacaranda Blues

Jacaranda Blues is about our society's ultimate failure to resolve class, psychological and emotional issues. Through the main character... Rhonda Smith, the readers are exposed to their troubled lives in which they seem to be endlessly battling traumatic situations one after the other. A product of a dysfunctional family, Rhonda Smith herself has many aspirations but fails to accomplish them. Her optimism and her relentless struggle to be make things better portrays her as a person of dogged determination but all her endeavors prove futile when she can not alter brother David and sister Clare. His death is a huge blow to all her efforts. Her disappointments with Chris, and her incapacity to love Sam, adds but to that misery. But she is able to rise like the phoenix in starting all over, because she finds Cherubs, a handicapped child that she adopts. She is able to overcome not just her pains but her menopausal fears as well...to a certain extent through Cherubs. And this is where the strength of this story lies. The story has an interesting twist in the end and it is up to the readers to judge whether or not the characters have been mete-out with poetic justice! Are they happy at last in their life's trade-offs. About The Author: Mehreen Ahmed has been publishing since 1987. Her works have appeared in The Sheaf: University of Saskachewan campus newspaper, VelvetIllusion literary magazine, Asia Writes and New Asian Writing Short Story Anthology 2011, The Story Institute Anthology 2011 and Wet Ink. These include short stories, newspaper articles and travel narratives. Her works have also been published in the leading journals of her area of study such as Computer Assisted Language learning: Lisse, The Netherlands, On-Call, ISTE. She has currently reviewed Teaching and Researching Language Learning Strategies by Rebecca L Oxford for ISTE for 2011 issue. Jacaranda Blues is her first book. She has completed two MA degrees, the fi rst was in English Literatur