FourEver Friends

Title: FOUREVER FRIENDS

Product Details
Paperback: 300 pages
Publisher: Nightengale Press
Language: English
ISBN-13: 9781933449739

Labor Day morning was a pristine autumn day, mild and crisp, typical of Detroit at that season. Jessica bounded out of bed, excited, and hurried to get dressed for the event. Kennedy’s Labor Day speech in the Motor City was undoubtedly going to be attuned to the needs of Labor. She felt sure Kennedy was destined to become President. Seeing her idol in person constituted the memory of a lifetime, and she could barely contain her anticipation. But when she and her father spotted the intimidating crowd encroaching on the small podium in the middle of the square in front of the Hilton Hotel downtown, Jessica’s heart sank.

“There’s no way we’re going to even catch a glimpse of him, Dad.”

“Don’t worry, Babe.” (“Babe” was his pet name for her.) “I’ll think of something.”

Jessica and her Dad fought their way as close to the podium as possible. The fervor and charged energy of the throng filled her with enthusiasm.

I would be content just to brush shoulders with those who can actually see JFK.

Then a roar unlike anything she had ever heard swelled up from the crowd, as the young Presidential hopeful appeared on the podium. Crouching low and jumping high, Jessica struggled to see something, anything, of him. She became more and more frustrated.

All of a sudden she felt herself being lifted onto her dad’s shoulders. She only saw Kennedy’s face in profile, but it was a view she would never forget.

It’s like seeing God.

A divine quality emanated from JFK, in his features crafted to perfection which seemed to come forth from the depths of his soul. Pure magic.

“Can you see now, Babe?”

She gasped, breathless with awe. “Oh! Oh yes, Dad.”

Enraptured, she listened to the wondrous tones of the future President’s voice with its charming Massachusetts inflections, and let herself be transported by his charisma.

How had her small-statured, handicapped father managed to hoist her upon his shoulders? She had no way of knowing, but her love for him deepened as surely as her love for that newfound leader of the Western world.

Violinist turned author ERICA MINER now has a multi-faceted career as an award-winning author, screenwriter, journalist and lecturer. A native of Detroit, she studied violin with Boston Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Joseph Silverstein at Boston University where she graduated cum laude; the New England Conservatory of Music; and the Tanglewood Music Center, summer home of the Boston Symphony, where she performed with such celebrated conductors as Leonard Bernstein and Erich Leinsdorf. Erica went on to perform with the prestigious Metropolitan Opera Company for 21 years, where she worked closely with renowned maestro James Levine.

When injuries from a car accident spelled the end of her musical career, Erica drew upon her lifelong love of writing for inspiration and studied screenwriting in New York and Los Angeles with script gurus Linda Seger and Ken Rotcop. Erica’s screenplays have won awards in a number of recognized competitions such as WinFemme, Santa Fe and the Writer’s Digest.

Inspired by journals she wrote during her travel adventures abroad, Erica penned the novel and screenplay of Travels With My Lovers, winner of the Fiction Prize in the Direct from the Author Book Awards. She also has written the feature screenplay and TV Series Bible for FourEver Friends, the first in her journal-based novel series chronicling four teenage girls' coming of age in Detroit in the volatile 1960s. Subsequent novel in the series are set in Boston and New York. In addition, Erica has written the screenplay of her mystery novel Murder In The Pit, now renamed Aria for Murder, released in Oct., 2022 by Level Best books, which takes place at the Met Opera. The sequel, Prelude to Murder, set at Santa Fe Opera, releases in Sept., 2023. The next sequel, which takes place at San Francisco Opera, will release in Oct., 2024.

Erica's lectures, seminars and workshops on writing and on opera have received kudos in venues worldwide, including: pre-concert lectures for the Seattle Symphony at Benaroya Hall; the Wagner Societies of New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Diego, Northern California, North Carolina and Sydney, Australia; the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Washington; for the Creative Retirement Institute at Edmonds College near Seattle; and on the High Seas, where Erica was named a top-rated speaker for both Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruise Lines. Her wide-ranging topics range from "The Art of Self Re-Invention" to "Journaling for Writers: Mining the Gold of Your Own Experiences”, "Wagner and Bernstein: Parallels and Contrasts", "Opera Meets Hollywood"; Shakespeare and the Opera Composers Who Loved Him; and numerous others.

Now a well recognized reviewer for Seattle Opera and San Diego Opera, as well as San Diego Symphony, Seattle Symphony and Pacific Northwest Ballet among many others, Erica is a regular contributor of articles, reviews and interviews to:
- BroadwayWorld BroadwayWorld Articles
- Bachtrack Bachtrack Articles
- LAOpus LAOpus Articles
- OperaPulse.com OperaPulse.com Articles

Erica's writings also have appeared in Leitmotive, the magazine of the Wagner Society of Northern California, Italian American Magazine, San Diego Jewish Journal, Del Mar Lifestyle, Opera+ St. Petersburg Music & Art Magazine, Vision Magazine, WORD San Diego, Istanbul Our City, and numerous E-zines.

March 2009
Carlsbad, CA

FOUREVER FRIENDS: will they become Sex and the City sirens, Desperate Housewives or part of a Modern Family?

This coming of age novel transcends time to satisfy the Boomers’ yearning for the Sixties and curiosity of Generations X, Generation Jones, and Generation Y about how growing up really was back in the good old days before AIDS and social media.

Young people today think of the Sixties as a bygone era, a time to be relegated to history books and their parents’ cocktail party conversations. But Boomers lived in a time of social revolution. And there is much to learn about those outrageous days.

In her YA novel, FourEver Friends, Erica Miner takes the reader back to the days when JFK gave hope to a new generation at a time when the Internet didn’t exist, when telephones were just changing from rotary dial to touch-tone, when the Jet Age was giving way to the Space Age, when cars guzzled gas, had tailfins, and two-tone paint jobs. Women’s Lib was a far off concept from the future, but women were just discovering the freedom offered by the Pill, and midnight curfews were becoming a thing of the past. Now, the Boomers are retiring at breakneck pace. They and their offspring are a huge audience for this first-in-a-series novel about four teenage girls coming of age in 1960s Detroit. The challenges facing adolescents of that era are very much the same as those that teens face today.

The friendship of the girls portrayed in links them not only by their keen devotion to each other but also by their shared passion for classical music. Their inner city Detroit high school is a cultural melting pot where students are judged by their intellect and talents, not by the color of their skin or religious background. Two forces compel the girls: their intense drive for perfection in performing music and the constant pull of hormonal angst.

Erica Miner followed her musical passion as a young woman and logged twenty-one years as a violinist with the Metropolitan Opera. She writes what she lived, and with an authenticity that is appealing to every reader. Whether these four friends will grow up to reflect the values of “Sex and the City,” become “Desperate Housewives, or become part of a "Modern Family” will be revealed in the subsequent novels in the series.

“The characters and the story reach into your heart and nestle there, staying with you long after you turn the final page.”
~ Dallas Woodburn, Author

FourEver Friends ISBN: 978-1-933449-73-9 ($15.95) Trade Paper
Author: Erica Miner
Published in 2009 by Nightengale Press