Heartbreak, Humor...and, ultimately, Hope

That's the message that comes through loud and clear in My Pineapples Went to Houston, Lee Gaitan's personal and powerful tale of surviving a decade of relentless chaos and loss. The "shock and awfulness" began in 2002 when her father died, her mother teetered on the brink of a coma and her husband of 22 years secretly lost all their money and ran off with a stripper. And it was all downhill from there! Then one day in the midst of all the chaos--somewhere between loud cursing and crying--she recalled an amusing anecdote she'd heard about pineapples that spoke to her circumstances in such an unexpectedly humorous way that she couldn't help but laugh out loud. "That moment of laughter was a small epiphany for me. I realized that I had allowed my sense of humor, which had always mitigated the bad breaks in my life and enhanced the good ones, to fall victim to the machete my ex-husband had taken to my life. I determined right then and there that I could no longer permit that. I instinctively knew that humor was the most potent, and just about the only, protection I had at my disposal to survive the crises unfolding around me, and I vowed to keep it alive." Told with honesty and insight--and, of course, humor--My Pineapples Went to Houston both inspires and entertains readers and offers hope and encouragement to those struggling with their own "plans gone outrageously awry."