The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern

Title:  The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern

Author:  Lynda Cohen Loigman

Publication Information:  St. Martin's Press. 2024. 320 pages.

ISBN:  1250278104 / 978-1250278104

Rating:   ★★★

Book Source:  I received this book through ????? free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "Augusta Stern did not want to retire."

Favorite Quote:  "Words can do anything... A kind word can fix a person't spirit. A cruel one can break a person's heart. Wicked words have caused wards, and hones words have me peace. Why should't they be able to heal."

This book is a geriatric love story. This book is also about first love. This book is also about women and the challenges they face to create change and be enabled to use their talents to the fully capacity.

Augusta Stern is turning eighty, newly retired, and moved from New York City to Florida. She grew up in Brooklyn. Her mother died when Augusta was young. She was raised by her father and her aunt who moved in to help on her mother's death. Her father was a trained pharmacist, wielding knowledge and credentials similar to what a doctor might. Her aunt was a healer, taught by the generations before and what she is able to learn herself. "If a person is denied is denied a formal education ... she must be inventive in her quest for knowledge. She must study the folktales and the stories. She must learn however she can. She must use every tool at her disposal."

As a teenager, Augusta is at the crossroads of her father's and her aunt's approach. Is that possible? Her father thinks not.  Her aunt lets Augusta find her own way with the understanding that "others accused me of being a witch, a Baba Yaga of the forest." (book where I first read about Baba Yaga)

The story of Augusta's childhood is also a story of Prohibition, the mafia, and of a first love. The fact that Augusta moves to Florida at age eighty, never having married tells us that the first love story did not end well. The fact that Augusta  has spent her life as a pharmacist with no mention of her aunt's knowledge tells us that something drove Augusta away from that craft. The fact that the book title mentions a "love elixir" may hint at a possible connection between the two facts of Augusta's life. Not surprisingly, the move brings Augusta face to face with that first love. So begins the book.

The story moves back and forth across the period of Augusta's life between her mother's death and a turning point in her young life and the short period of time after Augusta's relocation to Florida. The sixty years in between are left untold - a life lived. The story of the past is one of healing in different forms and of heartbreak. The story of the present is a sweet feel-good love story.

This book does not have the strength of The Matchmaker's Secret or The Two Family House, but a sweet story nevertheless.

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