"She's what Amy Tan is to Chinese Americans,
Isaac Bashevis Singer to the Jews, Jimmy Breslin to
the Irish, Mario Puzo to Italians, Terry MacMillan to
African-Americans...(her) novels give us a window
into the warmth and humor of Polish-American life.''
- Margaret Carlin, Rocky Mountain News
And so it begins, the critics applaud "Lily of the Valley": 
Albany (NY) Times-Union, Aug. 15, 1999
A gilded "Lily of the Valley''
Protagonist is extremely familiar
By Jo-Ann Johnston, Staff Writer
Sometime in the past year, LIly Wilk's life started to fray at the edges.
Family losses began to wear on her, and her career as a commercial artist was
just plain going sideways.
It's another good premise for a novel by Suzanne Strempek Shea. Shea creates
bittersweet comic tales about contemporary small-town life and about learning
to appreciate the gifts in the faces and places that surround you.
Her third novel, "Lily of the Valley,'' brings us again into the western
Massachusetts towns around Springfield and Northampton, and into the Catholic
Polish-American community where Shea grew up.
No one in Lily's working class family expected the Wilks would raise an
artist. But when the 10-year-old discovered a love for drawing, they
encouraged her. Eventually she goes on to an area state college, and then
sets up shop in her hometown. She pays the bills by painting signs and such
for area merchants and municipalities, working her own painting projects in
on the side. And things are really OK, for a while.
The Lily brings us up to the present. She's 39, and her husband has recently
left, severing Lily's connection to her stepson, Ted, in the process. Her
parents decide to retire to Florida. Her two siblings have been lost to her.
Lily starts to feel adrift.
Then comes the call. Mary Ziemba needs a family portrait. Mary is not just an
art collector, she's the maven who started the successful Grand Z chain of
supermarkets in the area (closely resembling the real life Big Y chain in
Western Massachusetts).
Lily needs to learn about Mary's past, and the people who have been close to
her, to pull off this painting. A big exhibition is promised, along witha
generous commission that Lily can use to buy the time she needs to do the
work of her choosing.
But the real prize turns out to be what the older woman demonstrates to Lily
about building a family and a life, and startinga gain when you have to.
And the story is engagingly told. Shea herself studied art in college and
then went back home to the Springfield area to become a reporter for the
local daily newspaper, the Union-News. Both influences show in her work.
She's got a rich eye for the visuals of the beautiful Pioneer Vally, along
with a good ear for dialogue. her writing style is easy and conversational,
though sometimes prone to breathlessly long narrations from Lily.
If there is anything that seems lacking, it's that we don't get more of Lily.
Mostly, the reader sees her through Lily's reactions to other people. That'a
device Shea used in her two earlier books, "Selling the Lite of Heaven'' and
"Hoopi Shoopi Donna,'' also first-person accounts of two women's lives.
"Selling the Lite of Heaven'' describes how a young woman's life becomes
interesting only after her seemingly perfect fiance dumps her - for the
priesthood - and she decides to sell her engagement ring. In "Hoopi Shoopi
Donna,'' polka music is the backdrop to the tale of a young girl's loss when
she loses her father's adoration.
Lily is more clearly developed than her two predecessors, but maybe not
enough. More of Lily, her closely held emotions and her sharp wit, couldn't
hurt.
She'll probably remind you of someone you know.
This review ran on page C3 of the Boston Globe on 08/22/99.
© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.
Adding ''Lily of the Valley'' to her two earlier books, Suzanne Strempek Shea (''Hoopi Shoopi Donna,'' ''Selling the Lite of Heaven'') has surely become the unofficial official novelist of central Massachusetts. She has a distinctive voice - comic, bittersweet, a bit old-fashioned - and a distinctive sense of place, rooted in the church- and family-centered Polish neighborhoods of the shabby industrial towns west of Worcester and east of the Berkshires.
Here her heroine is Lily Wilk, an artist whose practical bent and absence of ambition have left her only vaguely dissatisfied with the life of sign painting and pet portraits to which she has resigned herself. Mourning the breakup of her marriage and her parents' defection to Florida, Lily is feeling blue, until she receives a surprising commission from a rich old woman, the self-made supermarket queen of the Connecticut Valley, who wants her to paint a family portrait from a collection of photographs. Missing her own family terribly, Lily fails to note the implications of this odd request. Although the route is unexpected, Lily does manage to produce a painting that is the talk of the town, while also recalling what we're supposed to do when life hands us lemons.
In her novels the author has quietly created a quirky American version of English village fiction, wry and closely observed. Though her heroines' horizons may be narrow, their sorrows and triumphs are no less affecting for being confined to the most prosaic of hopes and the most prosaic of places.
Amanda Heller is a critic and editor who lives in Newton.
From the July 5 edition of "Publisher's Weekly"
Shea returns for the third time to the small-town Massachusetts she captured
so well in "Selling the Lite of Heaven'' and "Hoopi Shoopi Donna'' for this
sentimental yet satisfying tale of dreams realized in peculiar ways. Whe she
was 10, Lily Wilk pulled an art kit out of a grab bag and knew she has found
her "true occupation.'' Twenty nine years later, Lily is making her living as
an artist, though not in the way she once imagined. Kept busy by myriad
mundane tasks, she draws children's caricatures at parties, paints signs for
rest rooms and fire hydrants and occasionally exhibits her real art work at
the post office and local festivals. Still, she remains certain that she is
destined for greater things. One day opportunity knocks in the form of Mary
Ziemba, owner of a supermarket chain and the richest woman in town, who
commissions Lily to paint a portrait of her fmily, one that will depict each
member "at whatever was the best point in their lives.'' As the project
unfolds, Lily - whose own immediate family, ex-husband and stepson have
recently scattered across the globe - reflects more and more on the true
nature of human relations. She lovingly renders Lily's family and friends,
among them a coupon-addicted uncle and his girlfriend whose hobby is writing
to the survivors of famous dead people, with the same affectionate
brushstrokes she employs to describe her protagonist's beloved art. By the
time it becomes clear to Lily that family is as much created as it is
inherited, readers may well count themselves lucky to have gained vicarious
admission to her colorful circle.
From Kirkus Reviews
The story of a small-town Massachusetts girl with big-city ambitions, from the author of Hoopi Shoopi Donna (1996), etc. Most people have the tenor of their dreams pretty well established by the time theyre ten, and Lily Wilk is no exception. Someday, she vows, I will make something that people will stand in line for hours just to look at and study and be struck by. Then, satisfied beyond belief, they will travel all the way home in stunned silence, reflecting how they have been changed in some vital way by the sight of a thing made by my own right hand. Lilys obsession with creating a great work of art began almost by chance, when she picked a drawing set out of a grab-bag on her tenth birthday. From that day forward, Lily has drawn and painted everything she can get her hands on: tablecloths, fire hydrants, fingernails, storefront signs, dartboards, etc. Shes also done more conventional paintings and drawings, but her dreams of fame have remained largely dormant. Then, however, shes approached by a prosperous local businesswoman who asks her to paint a family portraitand she senses that this may be her chance. Mary Ziemba, Lilys patron, is the owner of a large chain of supermarkets who lives a deceptively simple life in spite of her great fortune. Instead of arranging a sitting, she provides Lily with photographs of the people she wants included in the painting, all of them her loved ones if not exactly her family in the strictest sense of the word. In the process of fitting togetherliterallyall the pieces of Marys life on a canvas, Lily begins to understand better the nature of her own feelings toward family and friends and eventually comes to a new understanding of herself. A bit mawkish but told with a freshness and real grace that make up for its sentimentality. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Acclaim for "Selling the
Lite of Heaven": 
"Rich with an unusual sweetness, the novel
perfectly captures small-town Polish-American life.''
- USA Today
"The author's affection for what are clearly
her own roots breaks like winter sun through the
deadpan gloom, giving the story its undeniable
offbeat charm.' ' - Amanda Heller, The Boston Sunday
Globe
"Selling the Lite of Heaven is an odd and
assured first novel and a wonderful coming-of-age
story. I can't imagine a single reader who will be
disappointed. This novel is a charmer, and so, no
matter how 'unremarkable' she thinks herself, is the
narrator.'' - Carolyn Banks, Washington Post Book
World
"Shea's wry yet warm rendering of a community
where strong mothers rule and meek daughters find
creative ways to rebel is satisfying on many
levels.'' - Laura Mathews, Glamour
Praise for "Hoopi Shoopi
Donna:'' 
"Readers who were beguiled by Suzanne
Strempek Shea's first novel, the incandescent
'Selling the Lite of Heaven,' and wondered if her
next book could match it, can relax. Her new work,
'Hoopi Shoopi Donna,' not only equals 'Selling,' but
in many ways surpasses it." - Martha Woodall,
The Philadelphia Inquirer
"She has written a wry, beautifully rendered
novel that is touching but never sentimental...She
may just be the fiction find of the summer.'' - Ellen
Feldman, New York Newsday
"(Shea) captures the spirit of an insular
Polish-Catholic community and homes in on one
unforgettable family...A sometimes rollicking,
sometimes heartbreaking, effective quirky read.'' -
Kirkus Reviews
