Land Mines

Sheilah Vance’s novel Land Mines (2009) walks the line between fiction and a non-fiction self-help book. Struggling to come to terms with her life after her husband leaves her suddenly after eleven years of marriage, Carolyn reads several self-help books and keeps a journal that becomes the text for Land Mines. The book is accompanied by a journal with prompts mirroring the journal that Carolyn keeps, and references to a number of real self-help books to which readers can refer to guide their own journeys through grief, divorce, and other struggles.

When the novel opens, Carolyn James is living a wonderful life. She has just begun a new job teaching writing at a local law school in Boston; she has the career and financial success of which she has always dreamed. Eleven years ago, she married her husband, a successful doctor with whom she has two children, a preteen son and daughter. For the most part, their family life is good. Happy with her home, her financial security, and the comfort that she can provide for her children, Carolyn also loves her husband and feels complete in many ways.

Seemingly out of the blue, Carolyn's happy life comes to a screeching halt. One day, her husband announces that he is leaving her for his yoga instructor. Terrified, Carolyn is emotionally devastated. She feels simultaneously betrayed and embarrassed that she is being left for a younger and more flexible woman. In addition, her husband's salary was the primary source of her financial comfort. Without it, everything in Carolyn's life must change.



Unsure where to go during the separation and divorce proceedings, Carolyn turns to writing, the foundation of her career and her passion. Keeping a journal, Carolyn writes through her pain and suffering, including the self-esteem issues she struggles with, knowing her beloved husband is with another woman. Carolyn writes about her faith, her anger, her small moments of joy, and her vast periods of grief in the journal, which becomes a time capsule of her process and her life during this tumultuous period.

In addition to the journaling, Carolyn begins to write about the books that she is reading to cope with her divorce. These books are all real best-selling self-help books—Carolyn writes about the content of these books, and the bits of wisdom she has learned and carries with her. These small references and book reviews build up an arsenal of resources, on top of Carolyn's story, to help guide readers struggling with similar upheaval.

Through the church, self-help books, a sense of humor, and a lot of writing, Carolyn makes it through her testy divorce. She finds a way to stay strong for her children and to communicate with them about her pain. She also starts to date again, finally seeing a light for herself at the end of a long and dark tunnel of grief.



Land Mines is sold with an accompanying journal, Journaling through Land Mines, which offers space for readers to reflect on their own pains, emotions, and experiences with divorce, grief, and other similarly difficult experiences.

A writer, lawyer, and motivational speaker, Vance was educated at Howard University and Georgetown Law School and built a successful career as a journalist before becoming a lawyer. After becoming a lawyer, Vance started The Elevator Group, a publishing company for independent authors, through which she published her first novel, Chasing the 400. The Elevator Group soon began publishing other independent authors. Land Mines was named a 2009 Best Book for Self-Help.