And the Winning Novel Is…

After my wife and I were together for several years, I realized she had a very important story to tell. Jila grew up in Iran deaf and Jewish. People with disabilities in Iran face discrimination from government social workers, healthcare providers, and scores of others forcing them to be trapped in their homes unable to live independently and become contributing members of society. Not until 2018 did members of the deaf and hard of hearing community in Iran launch a campaign to end systematic discrimination against their community.

ATM machines and other basic services are rarely accessible for people with disabilities, nor do they have access to personal assistance. Doctors in Iran rarely explain to people with disabilities the treatment they will receive nor require the patient’s consent, and the State Welfare Organization doesn’t provide adequate interpretation services for the deaf. 

Before the Iranian Revolution, when the Shah was in power, the Jewish population topped 100,000. Today, there are 9,000 Jews left in the Islamic Republic. 

Jila felt all of that and more as she grew up. By the time she was 35, a few years after the Iranian Revolution began, she gave up the fight and moved to the United States for a better life. In California, she was amazed how Americans treated people with disabilities far beyond what she was accustomed to. 

Seven years ago, Jila died after a 5-year bout with colon cancer. Unlike the healthcare workers in Iran, the staff at the City of Hope treated Jila with loving kindness and made accommodations for her deafness. 

A year after Jila’s death I decided to mourn my loss in a different way. I took all the stories she told me, organized them, and created a novel that fictionalized her life story. It took four years to write with buckets of tears. Once written, I had the book professionally edited, and I wrote to agents and publishers. In 2021 Paper Angel Press accepted The Lip Reader and offered this comment from the Acquisition Editor: It’s so vivid, so earnest, so honest, so full of love and luminous intelligence, so lacking in mean spirit even as it treats some of the deepest horrors of life with total clarity and resolution. I’m not ashamed to say that even this much-scarred, stoical woman is weeping freely. The world must have this book.

Back in November, I entered The Lip Reader into the 2022 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Last week I received an email congratulating me. The Lip Reader won first place in its category, Inspirational (Fiction). If I wasn’t afraid of hurting my back, I would have done cartwheels. 

The Next Generation Indie Book Awards is the largest International awards program for indie authors and independent publishers. Now, in its sixteenth year of operation, the Next Generation Indie Book Awards was established to recognize and honor the most exceptional independently published books in 80+ different categories, for the year, and is presented by Independent Book Publishing Professionals Group .

The Lip Reader is available as a trade paperback, hardcover, and digital edition. Digital copies of my book can be purchased from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Apple Books, Google Play, and Smashwords. For a print copy, you can find my novel on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, and IndieBound. 

If you have a Kindle, the Lip Reader will cost only $.99, but that won’t last for long. The paperback copy runs about $13.00 and the hardcover is $22.00. 

Like the comment from the Acquisition Editor at Paper Angel Press, the reviews of The Lip Reader have been wonderful with reviews being 4.9 out of 5 with 27 global ratings. 

I would like for you to order a copy of The Lip Reader—digital, print, or hardcopy—then write and post a review on Amazon. Your review doesn’t have to be a book report. One to two sentences about your thoughts regarding the novel will be fine. And make sure you tell your friends.