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Also by Mary Walker Baron:

But This Is Different, January 2011
e-Book

But This Is Different
Mary Walker Baron

Steel Cut Press
January 2011
On Sale: January 1, 2011
Featuring: Amelia Earhart; Margaret Mead
286 pages
ISBN: 1936380005
EAN: 2940013633575
Kindle: B005710PMK
e-Book
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Fiction Family Life

It's the dawn of a new year, 1978.

On a tiny, uncharted island in the South Pacific, residents are celebrating. Leading the ceremony is a woman known as "Mere." In the language of the island that means "Star of the Sea." Forty years ago, Mere came to their island from the sea and became their star.

Though she isn't a native, she works beside the islanders each day, helping women in childbirth and providing comfort to the dying. She shields children from storms and teaches them how to build paper airplanes that actually fly. She speaks the language of the island like a native.

Outside the island, the existence of Mere is a closely guarded secret. Forty years ago, islanders entered into a solemn pact, to keep her presence hidden from the rest of the world. It's a promise they have kept.

But all that changes on the first day of 1978. In the crate full of gifts that always arrives with the New Year, on board a very unusual boat, is a letter to Mere from the woman known to the islanders as "Pilapan", or "Mother Chief".

It is a letter that changes everything, that plunges Mere into a voyage of discovery. "All of my professional life I have insisted that death is a natural part of life..." the letter says. "But this is different. I am dying."

And indeed, from that point on, everything changes - for Mere and for readers who come along on this exploration of commitments and promises.

It's a world that's familiar and yet dramatically different. It will move you and it might even change you in the process.

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