Just One Look by Joanne Kukanza Easley

Just One Look by Joanne Kukanza Easley

Set in Chicago during the turbulent 60s and 70s, Just One Look traces one woman’s journey through loss, grief, denial, and letting go. Dani Marek falls in love at age thirteen, stuck boy-blind by a tall handsome fifteen-year-old named John. She floats on a cloud of happiness and plans their future for five blissful years, but John is drafted into the Viet Nam war and loses his life.

With her expectations shattered, Dani goes off the rails, wreaking revenge on the male population of Chicago. Her life is bereft of self-examination, but she is ambitious. When she meets a man with money, she marries him knowing she will use him for college tuition. She plans to leave him when she graduates and has a successful career. Their union is merely a mutual pact of convenience. After an unplanned pregnancy results from a night Dani would rather forget, her ambitions are derailed. When the marriage ends in Luke’s suicide, she’s left with a toddler, a fortune, and a budding career. At last, Dani turns a critical eye on how she’s conducted her life since John’s death. Her hard heart cracked open when Lorelei was born, then flowers when she meets John’s boyhood friend Noah, who served with him in the Army and has worshipped her from afar. Will Dani resolve her long-held grief and put the ghost who haunts her to rest?

Easley has captured the essence of 1965 Chicago, a young romance, a war that threatens happiness, a grief so strong that it resonates to the reader and created a story that will leave her readers desperate for another amazingly chiseled novel. I was absolutely smitten with this novel! Goodreads review

“Just One Look is one of those stories that stays with you and captures a special place in your heart. A tender, thoughtful piece of historical fiction, this story follows young Dani through the rapture and heartbreak of her first love, set against the tumultuous social changes of the 60s and 70s.” Midwest Book Review D. Donavan

Joanne Kukanza Easley’s award-winning debut novel, Sweet Jane, was released in March 2020. The novel was named the winner in adult fiction at the Texas Author Project and won several more honors. A retired registered nurse with experience in both the cold, clinical operating room and the emotionally fraught world of psychiatric hospitals, she lives and writes on a small ranch in the Texas Hill Country. Just One Look is her second published novel. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared online and in print anthologies.

Joanne writes fiction about complicated, twentieth-century women who eventually figure it out. Her characters’ paths are not easy, but with indomitable spirit, they rise to face life’s challenges.