Storytelling with a personal touch

If they happen to read popular fiction, they may be surprised to see that the longtime parenting educator is now appearing at area bookstores to promote her first novel, "Life Without Summer," published by St. Martin's Press last month.

Since she started her book tour, Griffin said, she's learned that speaking to fiction readers is very different from addressing audiences through her business, Proactive Parenting, which she started in a Scituate office in 2001 and has expanded to include speaking engagements nationwide and regular television appearances.

"My parenting talks and workshops are professional," Griffin said. "When I do a reading from 'Life without Summer,' it's much more personal."

The book, she said, blends her love of storytelling with a career's worth of experience working with families.

"I feel really fortunate these days," she said in an interview at the cozy blue Cape she shares with husband and business manager, Tom, and son, Stephen, 17, a junior at Scituate High School. (Daughter Caitlin recently finished her first year at Providence College in Rhode Island.)

The book is told in alternating journal entries from Tessa, whose preschool daughter was killed by a hit-and-run driver, and Celia, the therapist whom Tessa sees - at her husband's urging - to help her deal with debilitating grief. There's a mystery at the book's core, and a host of secrets are woven through the plot.

In a starred review, Publisher's Weekly called "Life without Summer" a "spellbinding tale of loss and hard-won redemption." Booklist described it as "stirringly believable."

Griffin, 49, celebrated the book's release with her friend and fellow writer, Amy MacKinnon, of Marshfield, whose first novel "Tethered" was published by a division of Random House last fall. The two women traded chapters and advice throughout the writing of both books and plan to keep supporting each other in all future novels.

Though "Life without Summer" is her first novel, it's the second book Griffin has written and sold. The first, "Negotiation Generation: Taking Back Parental Authority Without Punishment," was published by Penguin Books in 2007.

After she published "Negotiation Generation," Griffin, who holds degrees in nursing, counseling, and education, was invited to speak and teach workshops around the country. She's now the parenting contributor for Boston's Fox 25 Morning News, appearing regularly in the segment "Family Works," and she teaches in the graduate program of Social Work and Family Studies at Wheelock College in Boston.

Nina Dickerman, who teaches with Griffin at Wheelock, said she cried when she read the first chapter of "Life without Summer."

"Lynne is such a good storyteller," she said. "She's so skilled at bringing together key ideas with both concrete facts and anecdotes, and that helps in both of her chosen fields. She really takes readers on a journey, the same way she's taken the parents she's worked with on journeys."

Cari Kent of Duxbury began meeting with Griffin about six years ago, when her oldest child was in preschool. Those visits, Kent said, "were like therapy for me."

"She told me over and over, 'I'm not a therapist,' " Kent said. "But I got so comfortable with her. I always felt that she understood exactly what I was going through." She still calls Griffin for advice, she said, and has friends who will ask her, "What would Lynne say about this?" when faced with a parenting challenge.

Though Griffin has counseled parents who have lost children, she said that the characters in "Life without Summer" are entirely fictional.

"I would never use the stories of my clients," Griffin said. "But I will say that everything I've learned about families over the years informs my fiction."

The book's theme sprung from her interest in the subject of grief, and how grieving is such an individual experience. "I always had this idea in the back of my head about two women who were grieving in very different ways," she said.

Griffin experienced family grief herself at age 15 when her father died suddenly of a heart attack while on a business trip. When Griffin was 40, her mother had a stroke and died five months later.

"I've learned that there is healthy grieving, and then there's unhealthy grieving," said Griffin, whose cast of characters in "Life without Summer" turn to alcohol, religion, work, and other outlets in their grief.

The book is a story about families, she said, and how they often "don't turn out the way you think they will."

She expects her future novels will all center on the intricacies of family life.

"There will always be lies and betrayals, and there will always be secrets," she said. "There will always be things that characters can't reveal, not even to themselves."