Date of Release: Sunday, April 18th, 2021
Summary:
Passion, ambition and escape in the colorful artistic underworld off-Broadway, Cammie, a dancer in her mid-thirties, has just landed her first part in a show since coming to New York City. Yet the tug of familial obligation and the guilt of what she sacrificed to be there weigh down her dancing feet. Her lover, Tom, an older piano player, came to the city as a young man in the 1980s with a story eerily in tune with Cammie’s own. Through their triumphs and failures, both learn the fleeting nature of glory, the sweetness of new love, and how a dream come true isn’t cherished until it passes. The bright lights of the stage intoxicate, while degradation and despair lurk close behind the curtain. Their sagas are marred by two pandemics, AIDS in the 1980s and COVID-19 today, which ravaged the performing arts community, leaving a permanent scar on those who lived through them. The poignant intersection of their stories reveals a love affair unbound by time, reaching across decades through the notes of a piano’s remembered song.
Review:
With bright and smoothly written ambience, Gregory Erich Phillips took me back to a time that still resonates deeply in my soul. Only “Season in Lights” brought me invigoratingly closer to a life I always wonder about.
This is a book to be savored.
Leaning in personally and stirring my heart from one beat to the next, I was mesmerized.
I was falling in love. It was a state of all-inclusive love by the end, without exception.
This novel felt alive.
Close your eyes (after each chapter)
And feel the pulse.
The movement.
Frantically flipping from page to page feeling like I was an exuberant eavesdropper.
Close your eyes at the end.
And feel that last pulse!!
That movement!
Gregory is a force with the written word, a force with his knowledge of the arts and surely a gift to all of us who love these crafts!! I feel Gregory loving my city.
As I wait for theaters to open in NYC, “A Season in Lights” gave me a reprieve from the heartache of it being closed!
I was utterly beguiled with Gregory’s story. As he opened the curtain to his story he had my full attention. As a New Yorker, I say Bravo!
I’d certainly offer “A Season in Lights” a standing ovation.
I’ll read this again. It’s a book I’ll keep on my nightstand.
5 Stars.
Author Bio:
Award-winning author Gregory Erich Phillips writes stories with strong characters whose lives, with their many challenges and joys, resonate with a wide audience. Raised in a literary family, Gregory began writing at the age of fourteen.
His debut novel, Love of Finished Years, won the the grand prize in the Chanticleer Reviews International Writing Competition and was an Amazon bestseller in historical fiction. It was praised by Publishers Weekly, which called it “beguiling.” His second novel, The Exile, won first place in mainstream fiction in the PNWA literary contest.
Also an accomplished tango dancer and musician, Gregory has impressed audiences from the West Coast to New York City with his drama and grace on the dance floor (visit Moonlight Tango to see him in action).
Gregory’s website: https://gregoryerichphillips.com/about/
Order On World of the Write Review Bookshop here:
https://bookshop.org/a/23681/9781950495122
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The Write Review 