Wade Rouse, an internationally bestselling Michigan author based in Saugatuck, is releasing his sixth novel “The Clover Girls” in May.
Written under the pen name Viola Shipman, the novel takes place in Michigan and focuses on four girls who met at camp in 1985. Now approaching middle age, the women face challenges — with their families, careers and identities — that they never imagined as teens.
“Viola Shipman knows relationships. The Clover Girls will sometimes make you smile and other times cry, but like a true friendship, it is a novel you will forever savor and treasure,” said Mary Alice Monroe, a New York Times bestselling author.
Rouse said he writes each novel as a tribute to his grandma, also named Viola Shipman, and whose heirlooms and family stories inspire his fiction.
“My Grandma Shipman believed the simplest things in life were the most important: family, friends, our health,” Rouse said. “When I rediscovered those heirlooms in an attic after my mother died, I realized that my grandparents were never poor; they were the richest people I’d ever know because they understood the true meaning of life.”
Rouse’s books have appeared in numerous publications, including Time, Forbes and Writer’s Digest; have been featured on NBC’s “Today Show,” in the Washington Post, USA Today and “Chelsea Lately;” and have been chosen three times as Indie Next Pick by the nation’s independent booksellers.
Rouse said he hopes his novels “remind readers to slow down and remember what matters most in life.”
“I’ve learned through the last year and writing this novel that we need one another now more than ever,” he said. “We can’t hug, but we can be a lifesaver in the ocean to someone who is struggling, isolated and simply needs us to reach out to see how they are doing.”
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