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- Golden Globe(R) award-winner Sela Ward and Billy Campbell star in the highly acclaimed second season of ONCE AND AGAIN. Celebrate the loves and experience the triumphs and heartbreak that made ONCE AND AGAIN a favorite among critics and audiences everywhere. It's "a great show," raves Robert Bianco of USA TODAY. Now you can experience all 22 episodes of season two in this spectacular five-disc
This is a story about home . . .
At a time when much of America is yearning to recapture the spirit and feelings of a more innocent era, comes this exceptional new book from one of our most beloved actresses: a story of one woman's journey to reconnect with the landscape of her childhood.
Though best known today as the star of the television series Once & Again and Sisters, Sela Ward considers herself first and foremost a small-town girl.! The eldest of four children, she was raised by a father who helped her believe in herself, and by a mother who taught her a sense of the importance of virtues like self-respect, grace, and sacrifice. In her hometown of Meridian, Mississippi, within a tightly-knit community of neighbors and kin, Sela learned ways that would remain with her throughout life -- humble virtues that were "forged in the hearth of a loving home."
After graduating from the University of Alabama, Sela left the South in search of the excitement of cities like New York and Los Angeles, and the creative rewards of an acting career. But as she started her own family, she found herself pining for the comforts of her small-town childhood -- and searching for a way to balance her children's West Coast upbringing with a taste of a more natural way of life. She and her husband built a second home on a farm there, where she and her family could retreat several times each year, and became involved in se! veral projects designed to restore the vitality of the hometow! n she re membered so fondly. Even as Sela was reconnecting with the rhythms of home, though, her world was rocked by a crisis the family had long anticipated but never quite prepared for -- the death of her mother. As her family gathered around her mama's bedside, Sela's simple journey home became something far deeper: a turning point in her own life, as she pondered her mother's complicated legacy, and came to terms with just what it was she herself was searching for.
Filled with warmth, storytelling, and laughter, Homesick is a book to treasure: an exploration of the lessons we carry away with us from childhood, and a celebration of the bittersweet legacy of home.
Golden Globe(R) award-winner Sela Ward and Billy Campbell star in the highly acclaimed second season of ONCE AND AGAIN. Celebrate the loves and experience the triumphs and heartbreak that made ONCE AND AGAIN a favorite among critics and audiences everywhere. It's "a great show," raves Robert Bianco of USA ! TODAY. Now you can experience all 22 episodes of season two in this spectacular five-disc set, featuring exclusive bonus features. It's everything you remember and so much more. After the romantic courtship and the awkwardness of first dates, Once and Again in its second season settled into charting the growing relationship between fortysomethings Lily (Sela Ward) and Rick (Billy Campbell), who finally shook off all their angst and family pressures to embark on a long-term relationship. And of course, once finally committed in their love for each other, life rudely interrupts what should have been a comfortable, winding road to happily ever after. Rick's architecture firm is hand-picked for a new high-profile project, but it's dogged by community protests and run by the ever-devious Miles Drentell (David Clennon, reprising his shady character from thirtysomething); what's more, Rick's ex-wife, Karen (Susanna Thompson), is the lawyer representing the project's ! opposition. Lily finds herself as the assistant to a twentysom! ething e ntrepreneur at a fledgling dot-com, and the victim of the amorous, non-professional interests of a consultant for the troubled company. She's also faced with the fate of her late father's restaurant, run by her ex-husband, Jake (Jeffrey Nordling), who's charming but not the best of businessmen, and his financial strain soon becomes hers as well. Oh, and then there are the kids: Rick's son Eli (Shane West) would rather start a band than go to college, and daughter Jessie (Evan Rachel Wood) may be anorexic; Lily's daughter Grace (Julia Whelan) falls into a friendship with a troubled girl, and only Zoe (Meredith Deane) seems to be the most normal--that is, when she isn't worried about Rick and his kids moving into her house. The course of true love never did run smooth, and truth be told, there were a bit too many plot twists cooked up for this season of the Edward Zwick-Marshall Herskovitz drama (including a hostage episode at Jake's restaurant that garnered high ratings)! , but the creative team behind this show managed a deft balancing act among all the characters and plotlines. Teenage angst co-existed alongside more adult worries, and the specter of professional and money troubles for both Rick and Lily kept the characters grounded in a reality not often seen in television dramas. And in addition to giving all the cast members shining moments, Once and Again developed an extensive number of secondary characters, including Lily's mentally ill brother Aaron (Patrick Dempsey), Jake's flighty girlfriend Tiffany (Ever Carradine), Karen's hunky younger boyfriend (Mark Feuerstein), and an uncredited Edward Zwick as Jessie's therapist. It was the core cast, however, that made Once and Again soar--teen actors West and Whelan broke their characters' stereotypical molds, the young Wood (who would go on to star in thirteen) was outstanding as she navigated blooming adolescence: Nordling and Thompson, as the exes on the periphery,! were two of the best supporting actors ever on television. As! always, though, Ward and Campbell were the show's heart and soul, always communicating the underlying waves of frustration and anger in their character's facades as well as the love and happiness. Despite low ratings, ABC renewed Once and Again for a third and final season, giving all us fans of great television (and hopeless romantics) one more year with Rick and Lily after this one. --Mark Englehart
