About the Book
Joey Lerner has been running, from place to place and job to job. Now, at 32, she’s running from her home in New York City, where the last surviving member of her family has died, to Los Angeles, where she hopes to start over. Never one to follow the rules or take the obvious path, and thanks to her grandfather’s hands-on training, Joey gets herself hired as the ‘handyperson’ at a funky community center owned by an Australian surfer. Soon, the job of leading a Grief Group of young widows and widowers falls into her lap. The problem is – Joey hasn’t yet healed from her own losses. Over the next nine months Joey and the Grief Group journey from death to life, together and alone. Along the way, Joey discovers the work she was born to do.
Tears and Tequila is a story of love, loss, friendship, courage and, most of all, renewal; it tells of the healing that happens when you become part of a community in which everybody is missing someone.
Where to Buy
You can buy Tears and Tequila at the following online bookstores:
About the Authors
Linda Schreyer has a long career as a writer for TV and movies, including over 1,000 hours of serial television for programs such as General Hospital, Sunset Beach (for which she received a Writers Guild Award nomination), and The Bold and The Beautiful.
Jo-Ann Lautman is the founder of OUR HOUSE, one of the leading providers of grief education, workshops, and seminars in the U.S.–and the first-ever free-standing grief support center.
Tears and Tequila Blog
Reviews for Tears and Tequila
At some point in our lives all of us will be forced to endure grief. Tears and Tequila eloquently and humorously portrays the agony that we must deal with to come to terms with the finality of death. There truly is a light at the end of the tunnel and this special book beautifully depicts this.-- Melissa Rivers, Television host and producer
This novel about love, loss and renewal will make you laugh, cry and invest in the lives portrayed. With compassion and a light hand which only true understanding can provide, the authors impart important life lessons on how to cope with grief and find a new path to happiness.-- Edie Lutnick, Co-Founder and President, The Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund
Readers will love Linda Schreyer and Jo-Ann Lautman’s Joey, a character long overdue for reinvention and restoration. On her bittersweet and often humorous journey, Joey Lerner goes from handyperson to grief group counselor in a rundown learning center called “Oasis,” where she finds refuge, love and ultimately her own path.-- Leora Krygier, Author, When She Sleeps
Tears and Tequila is a page-turning story filled with unique characters, whose adventures reveal the true nature of grief: painful and sad, yes, but also marked by humor, irreverence and, ultimately, transformation.-- Hope Edelman, Author, Motherless Daughters
A big-hearted novel informed by the authors’ compassion and real-life experience in the field of grief, Tears and Tequila is chockablock with humor, hope, and the promise of consolation.-- Leah Hager Cohen, Author, The Grief of Others
Linda Schreyer and Jo-Ann Lautman have created a world that you want to inhabit in Tears and Tequila. Yes, it’s about grief, but that is overtaken by love, redemption and rebirth – and a lot of laughter!-- Bethany Rooney, Television director, Desperate Housewives, Beverly Hills, 90210, more.
“Linda Schreyer and Jo-Ann Lautman have succeeded in creating a page-turner of a novel about youthful widows and widowers without succumbing to mind numbing stereotypes and outdated stage theories. Set in a magical realm called Oasis, where grievers come to heal and grow, the grief group members infuse the book with vitality and their own unique voices as they share their pain, sorrow and even some light-hearted fun. Tears & Tequila takes readers on the roller coaster that is grief, while reminding us that human beings can learn to live, love and thrive after untimely loss.”-- Lauren Schneider, LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker)