Home About the Authors About the Publisher Buy The Books By Fay Jacobs By Stefani Deoul By Sarah Aldridge News & Reviews Publisher's Blog Excerpts Praise for The Carousel: Carousel has everything I look for in a great novel - beautifully drawn characters that you really care about, a story that you want to follow, love, redemption and a sense of mystery at its heart. Stefani Deoul has done a fabulous job in painting the richness of a small town brought together by loss, life and love. I can't recommend it enough. Do yourself a favour and order it now. -         Enlightenment Productions,           novelist and filmmaker      Shamim Sharif   “It’s not only the story itself—of finding beauty and belonging in the places—and people—where one least expects it, that makes The Carousel linger in the reader’s  mind long after the last page is turned. It’s the writing - the gorgeous, heartbreaking, lyrical writing. If I hadn’t been so caught up in the story, I would have stopped—again and again --just to reread the resonant, detailed, surprising, and beautiful paragraphs.          Maribeth Fischer,  author of         The Life You Longed For  This is a literary piece that's universal and commercial at the same time  - every page takes you on a powerful journey of transformation. What an enjoyable read!        Lara Zeilinsky - BLOG Radio

Stunning"  "Lyrical writing" "Powerful"  "Warm & Witty" "the characters will sweep you up  in their enthusiasm" Can they all be made whole? A bone-weary, emotionally drained woman shows up one morning at a diner and gas station in a small Northeast town.  Intending to refuel on gas and coffee and just keep driving, she is drawn instead to a pile of discarded carousel horses at the junkyard next door. Her find begins a ripple of gossip, mystery, and a restorative journey for the horses, herself, and the curious collection of townspeople taking the  tumultuous ride of hope, patience and a chance to grab the brass ring.   Catching the Ring by Amos Lassen There are several things that I look for in a novel—a literate plot, well drawn characters and writing style. I am happy to report that Stefani Deoul has mixed the first two with gorgeous style and she gives us a beautiful novel with “The Carousel”. Using the theme of making things whole, the story centers on a mysterious woman who shows up exhausted and drained at a small town gas station and diner somewhere in northeast America. Her plan was to get gas, have a cup of coffee and continue her travels but something catches her eye when she sees some carousel horses in the junkyard nest to the station. She begins to formulate a plan to restore the horses to their former glory and to builds them a home on a carousel. This plan circulates through the town and gossip starts even though no one is really sure what he/she is gossiping about.. The thought of riding the carousel is a metaphor for a journey of hope of not only riding but catching the brass ring which brings luck and good fortune to whomever is lucky enough to perform the feat. To me the story is about beauty and how it can reside in the least expected place, whether that be a junkyard or within someone and how do we reach that beauty and when we do, what is next. The book looks at the restoration of the horses and the carousel and of the characters themselves. We soon see that by restoring art, life is also restored and hope is part of that life. The idea of restoring the horses and then the carousel brings about friendship and unity and as they work together, we see changes. The beauty of the book, for me at least, was the recognition of those that we usually pay no attention to but when we do, we find that there is something there that is totally unexpected. We have a menagerie of characters that we like despite their oddities and as we talk with them, we learn less and less about the woman who saw the horses. She is mysterious and we want to know her but here is the mark of a good author, we do not get that chance until the end. There are twists throughout the plot that ultimately lead to redemption and the bringing together of pieces to make a whole. In refurbishing the horses, lives are rebuilt as are friendships and we read about this through writing that soars from the page and then lands in our hearts. The book is made up of the qualities I look for when reading and it surpassed my expectations. Even better is that there is a mystery here and we watch a town come together after it had split apart by love and loss. Even the secret past of the main character does not stop the townspeople coming together and the descriptions are detailed and vivid. As we learn about the woman’s past at the end of the book, we realize that she was never named yet she managed to bring characters together. As the carousel brought magic to the town, the characters brought themselves to each other. It is the subtle metaphor of the carousel that is the backbone of the story. The various subplots come from the residents of the town and through them we learn about Judaism as well as other sides of other characters. We feel their love and their pain, their loneliness and their beauty. The metaphor is also used differently on different characters and as the characters come together so does the plot which is quite simply an exceptional read.

Author Stefani Deoul               Independent Publishers'  IPPY Bronze Medal for Mid-Atlantic Regional  Best Fiction! Delaware Press Association  Fiction Book of the Year! National Federation of Press Women 3rd Place Fiction  Book of the Year Finalist: ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year  LGBT FICTION   REVIEWS: Jerry Wheeler, Out in Print Some books are more than the sum of their parts, transcending their base elements to become deeper and more important than they might seem at first. They provide the comfort of traveling to a known destination in familiar surroundings but take an interesting and surprising route. Such is the case with Stefani Deoul s The Carousel. The plot veers dangerously close to a Lifetime movie. An unnamed, broken woman (Charlize Theron) shows up outside the Old Town Diner, run by the plucky Millie Hickson (Sally Field). The woman falls in love with a bunch of trashed-out carousel horses in a nearby junkyard, and the renovation of those horses provides the spark for the renewal of the town, its inhabitants and her own personal journey towards wholeness. In the hands of a lesser writer, this material might well be mired in mawkish sentimentality, but Deoul never stoops to the cheap sob. Her merry go round lady is dark and unpredictable, and her relationship with Millie has a tense dynamic that gives the plot some real drama. Deoul s prose is straightforward and uncluttered, sharp enough to make its point and lyrical enough to leave an impression. The sub-plots and minor characters are also interesting and well-drawn, especially the expert carvers Sam and Morris, whose age and experience demand they pass their skills to an initially unwilling apprentice, teenage Cameron. Reverend Dalton, an early cheerleader of the project, is also a fascinating character, but nearly all the cast has a role to play in the finish of the carousel. If all this sounds a bit contrived, I swear you won t notice. The prose is that good and the characters will sweep you up in their enthusiasm until you find yourself cheering them on, chagrined at their setbacks and elated by their successes. This book is full of strong women in leadership roles, taking on challenges and making dreams come true. Stefani Deoul s The Carousel is a warm, entertaining read whose ending will leave you smiling and just a bit sad that it s over. But don t blame me if you have visions of stately wooden horses frozen in mid-prance as they bob up and down to calliope music and you lean out in space to grab the brass ring. Sally Field would want you to. Anna Furtado , Just About Write Can a rag-tag bunch of citizens who are hardly in touch with themselves, let alone with each other, ever come together? As this tale begin-tag bunch of citizens who are hardly in touch with themselves, let alone with each other, ever come together? As this tale begins, there is little hope—little hope in the lives of the townspeople and little hope in the woman who stops in the town because she is just too tired to drive any further. The woman is distraught, numb, barely coping. But when she sees the carousel horses in a junkyard, she knows she has to do something to bring them life. The restoration becomes a metaphor for the lives of the people who slowly find one other and come together to create something bigger than themselves. This story is written with few scene breaks, and many characters are given a point of view within single scenes, yet this seems to add to the revelatory nature of the tale. Every word carries the reader along as the woman, known to the townspeople only as “the carousel lady,” somehow brings healing and wholeness to others that she cannot seem to find for herself. But healing is a relative thing. For some it comes quickly and early. For others it comes late and long. The carousel lady seems to be carried along on the wave of healing and restoration as are the horses and townspeople, in spite of herself. The story is laced with characters that are both quirky and likeable. The mystery surrounding the carousel lady will keep the reader turning page after page, as will the desire to know if the town will succeed. This story, with its surprising lesbian twist, adds to the totality of the mystery itself. In the end, The Carousel is one of those stories that lingers long after the last page is turned—a story of redemption and a journey to wholeness—and one not to be missed. This tale is sure to find a special place in the reader’s heart.