Tammy Flanders Hetrick has been telling stories all her life, refining her skills at age ten through marathon tag-team storytelling with her best friend, honing her craft through decades of business writing, and ultimately finding joy in extracurricular creative writing. She has published short stories in Your Teen Magazine, Blue Ocean Institute’s Sea Stories, and Route 7 Literary Journal. In 2009 she was recognized with the Outdoor Industries Women’s Coalition’s Pioneering Woman Award for coaching and mentoring women in the workplace. Hetrick lives in Vermont with her husband of thirty years, their two cats, and a beagle/miniature bull mix.
“Tammy Flanders Hetrick's novel Stella Rose proves to the reader
that Love is not just stronger than Death, but stranger. Succumbing
to illness, a brilliant woman bequeaths her teenager daughter,
their home, and a series of instructions for life while grieving,
to her best friend. Hetrick deftly studies the ties that bind,
unraveling mysteries that complicate and, finally, enrich
intimacy.”
—Verandah Porche, author of Sudden Eden and recipient of an
Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Marlboro College
“In this fascinating exploration of the interconnectedness of
lives, Tammy Hetrick mines the ways in which relationships both
grow and flounder under the stress of devastating disease,
familiarity, and responsibility. Stella Rose takes the reader
through the volatile territory of adolescence as a teenager
navigates unchartered possibilities replete with equal doses of
hazard and potential.”
—Yvonne Daley, author of Octavia Boulevard and director of the
Green Mountain Writers Conference
“Tammy Flanders Hetrick has written a marvelous first novel. Stella
Rose is the dramatic, clear-eyed story of a dying mother who leaves
her beloved friend the most precious legacy imaginable: her
sixteen-year-old daughter to raise. All three characters—Rose,
Abby, and Olivia—are wonderfully likeable, both for their strengths
and their human shortcomings. Ultimately, Stella Rose is a
celebration of love in many forms, from wildly romantic passion to
friendship, and eternal family devotion to an abiding love of the
world we all live in.”
—Howard Frank Mosher, author of A Stranger in the Kingdom and Where
the Rivers Flow North
“Warmhearted and sincere, Stella Rose is a sensitive portrait of
loss, friendship and the families we choose. . . . A big-hearted
novel of love and loss, narrated by a woman grappling with grief
while caring for her best friend's teen daughter.”
—Shelf Awareness for Readers
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