The Unlikely Lavender Queen: A Memoir of Unexpected Blossoming | 
| Author: Jeannie Ralston
Publisher: Broadway
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy New: $12.98
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Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 36042
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 5.9 x 1.2
ISBN: 0767927958
Dewey Decimal Number: 633.81
EAN: 9780767927956
ASIN: 0767927958
Publication Date: May 27, 2008
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Condition: BRAND NEW FIRST EDITION HARDCOVER from bookstore shelves ; Pristine but for tiny 1/8" scrunches bottom middle pages from printing. Bookbearers is a small New England Independent bookseller devoted to books and reading !
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Product Description
“I couldn’t help but question how I’d gotten to this strange spot in my life, so far from what I’d expected for myself. Yes, there had been a heady romance a few years back. Then a slew of subsequent decisions, fueled by love and yearnings I didn’t even know I had. But I never, ever would have suspected that this was where the sum total of them would bring me. That afternoon a new doubt dripped into my mind. When do you know, I wondered, whether the choices you’ve made were the right ones?”
In 1990, Jeannie Ralston was a successful magazine writer and bona fide city girl—the type of woman who couldn't imagine living on soil not shaded by skyscrapers. By 1994, she had called off an engagement, married Robb, a National Geographic photographer, and was living in Blanco Texas, population 1600.
The Unlikely Lavender Queen is the intimate story of a woman who gives up a lot for the man she loves – her beloved blue state, bagels and all-night bodegas—only to have to wonder: Was it too much? Ralston offers a lively chronicle of her life as a wife, new mother and an urban settler in rural Texas. As she labors to convert a dilapidated barn into a livable home, deal with scorpions and unbearably hot summers, raise two young children while Robb is frequently away on assignment, she realizes her ultimate struggle is to reconcile her life plans and goals with her husband’s without coming out the proverbial loser. And just when it seems like she might be losing that fight--and herself-- a little purple bloom changes her life.
For centuries lavender has been a mystical herb, so valuable to ancient Romans that a bushel would cost nearly a month’s wages. But when Robb returns from a trip to Provence with a plan for growing lavender on their land, Ralston is not convinced—in fact the last thing she needed or wanted was to take up farming on top of everything else. Then, much to her surprise, she slowly but surely falls in love with lavender, and in the course of growing and selling blooms, hosting the public at the farm, and creating lavender products, she discovers a new side of herself. A few short years later, Ralston had built Hill Country Lavender, a thriving commercial enterprise that transforms both her little corner of Texas and her life.
The Unlikely Lavender Queen will resonate with all women who have faced the tough choices that come with “having it all” and secretly (or not so secretly) hoped for great adventure to come along and surprise them. Ralston’s honest, funny, and poignant memoir is a testament to the fact that such adventures await us around every bend in life.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
 Bloom where you are planted! September 4, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I Had the pleasure of meeting Jeannie Ralston at the Los Poblanos Lavender Festival in Albuquerque. A friend had told me Jeannie's story, and I found it so intriguing that I bought her book on the spot. I could hardly wait to read it. Coincidentally, I was reading a mystery novel about lavender in the Texas hill country, a perfect segue! Her willingness to relocate with her husband, her acceptance of moving into a barn being remodeled... warts and all, this woman is very committed to her marriage. Her struggle to have children made the birth of her sons poignant. I grieved with Jeannie and her family over the loss of their beloved pets. Getting into lavender farming... what a dream! And she left it all. For something better. I loved this book; I treasure it!
Lavender Nourishes a Woman's Soul September 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A fantastic inspirational read that covers the gamut of a woman's life;
woven with personal stories about family, career, relationship, marriage, money and the desire for harmonious balance of it all. This read is filled with women's wit and wisdom and my readers are raving about The Unlikely Lavender Queen. "Poignant, uplifting and a clear demonstration that as women, WE CAN SOW SEEDS OF HOPE for the world to witness and blossom through each and every aspect of our life." A must read. - Laura Ponticello, Publisher, Laura's List: Books for Women
Loved it! September 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
From the moment I picked this up, I just couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen. I thought the book was beautifully written and I love how it read like fiction. The pictures of the home and the lavendar farm on her website are just as she described them.
I think the book is inspiring and lovely and I would highly recommend this to anyone.
Fabulous Book by a Texas "Pioneer" August 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Unlikely Lavender Queen: A Memoir of Unexpected Blossoming
The dictionary tells us that a pioneer is a person who is one of the first to do something. A pioneer may settle previously uninhabited territory, or open up new areas of thought or research.
Texas is one of those enigmatic places in America that has always attracted pioneers. Long before Anglos arrived in the area to battle, scratch, and dig it into a state, there were Spaniards explorers who came seeking gold and fountains of youth. They brought cattle and founded missions. Pioneers from the Canary Islands established early forms government in the area that is now present day San Antonio. Anglos from the Eastern U.S. began to arrive, seeking new frontiers on fresh, virgin soil. Large groups of Germans began to settle in the Hill Country regions. They left behind lives as merchants and city dwellers to tackle the rough terrain and torrid climate to become farmers and bakers and butchers. All of these people certainly fall within the definition of "pioneer."
Texas continues to attract pioneers, albeit an entirely new breed. But they still fit the definition. In the mid-70s a small but determined group of pioneers began to plant vineyards and establish wineries. They came from all over, many giving up lucrative careers in entirely unrelated fields. Many of the early wine pioneers gave up ranching on Texas lands passed down through generations of their ancestors to plant grapes. Today, the Texas wine industry is one of our biggest agricultural industries, employing thousands and producing revenue beyond the dreams of any of those early winemakers, and boasting over 200 wineries.
Fast forward to 2000 when the newest pioneer endeavor was born in Texas. Veteran photographer Robb Kendrick and his wife, Jeannie Ralston, established Hill Country Lavender on their 200 acre farm outside of Blanco, in the heart of the Texas Hill Country. In her fascinating book, The Unlikely Lavender Queen, Jeannie Ralston unfolds the story of her journey from New York, where she had established herself as a successful journalist, having attained an Associate Editor position at McCall's Magazine by the age of twenty-two. She met Robb Kendrick on an assignment for Life magazine in Fort Worth and began the journey that would bring her to Texas and eventually to the rock-strewn acreage and an old stone barn that would become her home. Jeannie Ralston become a pioneer in every sense of the word.
This book is bound to have widespread appeal. First, it's the story of a woman who falls in love with an adventurer and realizes early on that her life with him will be a series of shared adventures, into which she was often dragged kicking and screaming, compromises, and drastically altered paradigms. Women will universally relate. Finding herself seven months pregnant and left to turn the barn, formerly inhabited by rattlesnakes and hay bales, into a home while Robb traveled the world on photographic assignments, Jeannie juggles trying to maintain her life as a writer, construction foreman, executioner of scorpions, and mother-to-be - all while adjusting to life in a rural small Texas town which was the antithesis of her urban, liberal background.
It was on one of his assignments to photograph the lavender industry in France that Robb formulated his newest adventure - the very lavender he was photographing. He noticed the same similarities of soil and climate conditions in Provence and the Texas Hill Country that the winemakers had discovered thirty years earlier. After researching varietals and consulting with French lavender growers, Robb planted a first experimental crop on their Hill Country farm which was successful. He then planted 10,000 lavender plants. For the first harvest in 2002, Robb was, again, off on assignment, leaving Jeannie, now the mother of two toddlers, to bring in the harvest. The book begins with a reflective Prologue beginning at the dawn of that harvest, and Jeannie's first delivery of lavender bouquets to Central Market in Austin. It was the beginning of yet another new adventure and re- re-invention of herself.
Secondly, the book will appeal to Hill Country residents - both new and long term - as a familiar chronicle of the evolution of the Hill Country into the number one tourist destination in America, fueled in great part by Jeannie Ralston's role in firmly establishing the Hill Country as a fabulous base of what is being referred to as "Agri-Tourism", bringing millions of tourists and billions of dollars to the Hill Country. By 2006, when the Kendricks sold Hill Country Lavender and moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, they had spawned an industry that covered seven Hill Country counties and established Blanco, Texas, as the center of the rapidly growing lavender industry in Texas, earning it the designation, although unofficial, as The Lavender Capital of Texas.
Read this book. It's a truly out-of-the-ordinary story of a woman's evolution to a meaningful life through a process of learning, growing, and learning to let go. I couldn't put it down. Bravo, Jeannie - and the Hill Country misses its Lavender Queen.
Smart, engaging, wonderful! August 25, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I opened this book to glance over the first page (my litmus test) and 24 hours later, I had finished it. I am not a fan of Southern Silly Lit (Sweet Potato Queen et al) and let me assure you that is NOT this book. Instead, it is intelligent and engaging, a beautifully written, smartly crafted story that just happens to be true.
Jeannie Ralston is a wonderful writer and I thank her for sharing her farm, her family, her entrepreneurial spirit and her colorful story with me. Get a glass of wine, settle in with this book and before you know it, you, too, will be wandering through the lavender fields.
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