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| Author: Jeannie Ralston
Publisher: Broadway
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy New: $11.97
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Avg. Customer Rating:  33 reviews
Sales Rank: 19535
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
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New. 100% money back guarantee. All books shipped from Strand Bookstore, New York City, USA.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Lavender Nourishes a Woman's Soul September 1, 2008
7 out of 9 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
laurasbooklist@aol.com
Loved it! September 1, 2008
9 out of 10 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
8 out of 9 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
11 out of 13 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.
An Inspiring Book for Women August 21, 2008
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
Anyone who has ever found that their lives are heading in a direction other than what they had originally planned will sympathize and enjoy reading Jeannie Ralston's The Unlikely Lavender Queen: A Memoir of Unexpected Blossoming.
The memoir begins when as Jeannie harvests her first order of lavender. From there, we travel back to what started it all: a National Geographic photographer with fabulous legs. Jeannie writes about how her marriage to what she calls a "restless" man led to a life she never would have imagined for herself.
For the first part of her life, Jeannie worked hard to establish herself as a talented writer. She wrote stories for Life, Time, and National Geographic and has been a contributing editor for Allure and is currently still one for Parenting. After she meets Robb, they fall in love and eventually marry and move to Texas. Jeannie is helplessly homesick and misses New York, the city she feels symbolizes her youth.
Although the couple first lives in Austin, a city that becomes more than tolerable in Jeannie's mind, they eventually build a home in the Hill Country. Jeannie hates it, and, when Robb decides he wants to start a lavender farm, she only becomes more miserable.
The rest of the book details her gradual acceptance and resulting fondess for the business they build and the small town they live in. But it doesn't end there, Ralston's story has a twist at the end, and her story is far from over.
When she was in town to read from her memoir, I had the opportunity to speak with Ralston. She filled me in on her life as it is now and her relationship with her husband. When I asked her to describe it for me, she told me "Robb pushes me, but he has never suppressed me. In the end, it always seems to turn out for the best."
If Jeannie has learned anything from the lavendar experience, it has been to "let go." At this point in her life, she is more open to his ideas because he has never let her or their boys down or put them in a situation that didn't have their best interest at heart.
The Unlikely Lavender Queen is a witty and entertaining story that will keep you glued to the pages to discover what will happen next. And those who enjoy it can look for more books from Ralston in the future.
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