Books

Joyce Rachelle's fourth poetry book, Things I've Picked Up and Brought Home, gathers the words everyone needs at the start and the end of their day. It explores how even the most random things have a story to tell about who we are, revealing the deep, dark, sometimes comical and sometimes dangerous truths that familiarity has managed to blur.

Second Life is a collection of poems about the different shades and spectrums of life, love and loss. It approaches sentiment and dances with humor. It gives hope, yet does not lie when there is none and comes back with laughter for comfort. Lovers of rhyme as well as free verse will delight in this little book which, on account of how the poems are arranged, can be read from start to finish like one would a story, or discovered separately and in different places, like one would a friend.

Grace lives a fairly normal life with her mother and sister in a peaceful suburban village in the Philippines where everything is as good as can be expected. But a sudden grief takes over when her family moves to live in the United States on a long-standing petition they all thought would never come.

This temporary separation, however, finds comfort in a newfound faith and a group of unlikely friends. But as human reality dawns, can Grace handle the blow of a cold, hard truth that will inevitably shake the very foundations of everything she believes?

Follow the story of a woman who goes from one loophole to another, trying to figure out how to guarantee a ticket to Paradise – only to discover that she had been wasting her years in methods that weren’t ever going to get her there.

Written in traditional verse, Sewing Figs is an honest plunge into every person’s struggle for redemption and the overarching love and grace of a Creator who completed the job himself.

This volume contains thirty-eight poems on life and love, friendship and betrayal, chasing dreams, and the struggle to rise above pain. Each work engages the reader with new perspectives, comical irony, and a consistent thread of honesty so that they ring true for anyone who has a taste for verse.