Did you ever tell a lie for so long that even you believed it? And then got caught? Ah… Then you understand Sara in Anne Krists’ Burning Bridges.
Letters delivered decades late send shock waves through Sara Richards’s world. Nothing is the same, especially her memories of Paul, a man to whom she’d given her heart years before. Now, sharing her secrets and mending her mistakes of the past means putting her life back together while crossing burning bridges. It will be the hardest thing Sara’s ever done.
Publisher: Nomad Authors Publishing
Release date: January 20, 2020
Buy link: mybook.to/BurningBridges
Price: $2.99 (for eBook), $9.99 (for paperback), KU
Word count: 83,000
Years ago, while visiting my mother in Virginia, I heard a news story. Up in Lynchburg, a mail carrier had died. When his family was cleaning out the property, they discovered two bags of mail decades old thrown into the back of his garden shed. The story was, maybe the man hadn’t felt like working one day and stuffed the bags into the place where they’d lain all this time. I immediately wondered how lives had been changed because one man decided not to do his job that day. Had people not received bills? Birthday cards? Expected packages?
Letters of love?
The Post Office did their best to deliver the lost mail, but what life went one direction instead of another because of that one slip of fate?
Thus came the story of Burning Bridges, where Sara Richards’ life changes not only because of letters she didn’t receive but because of the letters she did, decades late.
Burning Bridges is a true love story, begun in Virginia Beach as the Vietnam War is winding down—though no one knew that at the time—and ending in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, where two soul mates find each other again. Do they stay together?
Ah. I’ve already said it’s a true love story, but sometimes, even true love has a way of not quite holding on.
I hope you enjoy the book of my heart, Burning Bridges.
Excerpt:
Sara stared at the letters arranged before her in numerical order. The moment in time she and Paul shared was long ago, yet her dream had conjured his presence as though she’d just seen him. In her mind, his blue eyes darkened with passion before his lips captured hers, and he moaned his appreciation when their tongues met. She tasted his sweetness and knew the steel of his arms as he held her. How many nights had she put herself through hell reliving those memories?
Too damn many.
After the concert, they’d met clandestinely on weekends, mostly at Sandbridge, where they could walk and talk undisturbed. With each meeting, stirrings built deep in Sara that pushed her to want more, but Paul insisted they restrain themselves because of her age.
Then the weekend before he shipped out, she’d planned a surprise and her life changed forever.
The kettle screeched, bringing her back to the present. Sara prepared a cup of tea and then picked up the envelope marked twenty-eight. At one time, she would have given her right arm to hold this letter. Now, curiosity and the desire for a brief escape drove her more than the passion of youth. Blind love had faded when she’d had no word to bolster her during the long weeks after the ship left.
First had come the waiting. No letters arrived, even though she wrote him daily. There were no phone calls, no notes, no anything, for days that dragged into weeks then crept into months.
Anticipation morphed into anxiety. She worried he was sick or hurt and unable to write.
One day she admitted that Paul must be afraid to write for some reason, and she feared what he would say if she did receive a letter. That their time together had been a mistake, that she was too young to be in love. That he really loved someone else and Sara had been only a stand-in while he was in Virginia. Perversely, she began to sigh with relief when she arrived home and found no word.
Now, knowing why she hadn’t received mail, what would she feel if she opened this letter and her old fears proved to be true?
“Nothing,” she murmured. “Paul’s dead. He can’t hurt me anymore.” At the very least, his letters might allow her to put his ghost to rest. For that reason alone, she had to read them.
She slid her thumb under the flap and ripped the envelope open. A single sheet held his hurried scrawl.
Some reader comments about Burning Bridges:
“I loved it! And now my daughter’s reading it.” Sherry, a reader
“I just finished reading BURNING BRIDGES. Thank you for writing such a powerful story about how real love can overcome all obstacles. I appreciate the fact that Sara and Paul were imperfect and made mistakes. They needed each other to polish off their rough edges and make them complete. How nice that characters of middle age were written as attractive and sexual human beings.” A reader, Virginia
“I give Burning Bridges 6 stars out of 5!! A true love story…I’m ready for more.” – A reader, Byron, TaylorMade Bod
“I loved it, just loved it! I was going to take it with me on vacation but I started reading and didn’t want to stop. It was addictive.” – Chiara, a reader
“Loved it. Just loved it.” – Beverly, a Beaufort reader
Author Anne Krist:
A few years ago, Dee S. Knight began writing, making getting up in the morning fun. During the day, her characters killed people, fell in love, became drunk with power, or sober with responsibility. And they had sex, lots of sex.
After a while, Dee split her personality into thirds. She writes as Anne Krist for sweeter romances, and Jenna Stewart for ménage and shifter stories. All three of her personas are found on the Nomad Authors website. Also, once a month, look for Dee’s Charity Sunday blog posts, where your comment can support a selected charity. Contact Anne at annekrist@nomadauthors.com.
Writer, photographer, social critical artist, musician, and occasional actress, J. Arlene Culiner, was born in New York and raised in Toronto. She has crossed much of Europe on foot, has lived in a Hungarian mud house, a Bavarian castle, a Turkish cave-dwelling, on a Dutch canal, and in a haunted house on the English moors. She now resides in a 400-year-old former inn in a French village of no interest and, much to local dismay, protects all creatures, especially spiders and snakes. She particularly enjoys incorporating into short stories, mysteries, narrative non-fiction, and romances, her experiences in out-of-the-way communities, and her conversations with strange characters.
Since it’s snowing as I type this and is supposed to be for part of every day for the next 10 days, I feel qualified to describe what I could do on inclement days like these. I could paint a masterpiece, sew a glimmering ball gown, sculpt a museum-worthy bust of Alfred E. Neuman, or compose an opera in Italian.
say you do stuff like bake bread, organize a caroling group to appreciate the snow with song, or anything like that. You’ll just make me tired and I’ll have to slip in a nap between reading and writing.
Cynthia Terelst is a project officer by day and a writer by night. She is a contemporary romance writer who likes to share a little bit of history, some Australian scenery and a whole lotta love. Cynthia does not shy away from difficult topics, as she feels that they should not be ignored.
Maybe because after eight years of trucking and never having a home, and then moving every couple of years while Jack consulted all over the country, I’m pretty much a homebody now. So, while even I have my limits as to how much I can stand being a hermit, chained to the house, I often vote for staycation over vacation. That’s not to say that we haven’t been out a bit in the past several years of living in the great American Northwest. We’ve been to Yellowstone and Seattle, and along the Columbia Gorge. I plan to see Glacier National Park this spring…maybe on our way to Alaska!!! But for the most part, I’m happy puttering in my own kitchen, sitting on my own couch, and sleeping in my own bed.
than it is in January! Beautiful either way, but more bison that are also closer in winter, bubbling mud and fumaroles surrounded by snow, and frozen waterfalls. In September the trees had turned and blazing aspens stood out sharply on the mountainsides. We combined the September trip with family, by exiting the park at the east gate and driving across Wyoming and South Dakota to see my mom in Iowa.
timeshare. You can go to the restored area when the spirit moves you, and you can relax and nap the rest of the time. 😉 There are some great restaurants in Williamsburg (and lots of good pancake houses!), so it’s a wonderful place to experience history, to golf, to explore the coast, and to recharge.
I don’t know if I’ve ever revealed this or not, but I am not the most disciplined person in the world. I used to be better. If I started reading a book, I finished reading the book. If I began a needle work project, I finished the needlework project. If I set a resolution at New Years, I followed through with said resolution.
things differently than when we were younger. When you feel like the whole of life is stretched out in front of you, pushing through that 1,000-page book about earthworms in the Antarctic doesn’t seem quite so bad (I said quite so bad!). You might even make your own annotations. But now? Give me a good 300-page romance and forget earthworms. I leave the 15×15 inch counted cross stitch to someone else to do now, and I usually avoid making resolutions.
Resolutions seem to be fly-by-night. If something is important enough to do, you don’t wait until New Year’s Eve and decide to do it. You weigh the pros and cons and make a logical decision. You make a plan, set a path, and follow it because you know it’s right, not because you suddenly feel overweight after weeks of holiday food. You do it because you need to and when you need to.
Wouldn’t you know it? I messed up on week 15 of the 52 week blog challenge, and have been off count since March or so! I think I’ve been on topic, but really, at this point who knows? 😉
Sometimes it happens slowly. You get up to sunshine. Dress in your favorite blouse and skirt and slip on brand new $200-shoes. You get to work with no problems and prepare for a client meeting. Then find that your favorite blouse has a stain that you hadn’t noticed. Glancing out the window, you see what looks like clouds in the distance. Walking into the conference room your heel on your right foot catches on the carpet and twists your ankle. Out the window, was that lightning? You hobble well enough to get through your meeting. At lunch with the client, you step outside the building into a downpour, and a cab driving by splashes muddy water all over you…and your shoes, which are now soaked and covered with a light layer of street crud.
arrive at the office for your meeting, you decide to stop at your favorite coffee shop for pastries and coffee to go for everyone. Oops! The person ahead of you turns too quickly and crashes into you, losing the cover on her Strawberry & Toasted Almonds Overnight Grains and dumping her Caramel Cloud Macchiato with two shots of espresso all over your skirt and…your shoes. (With apologies to Starbucks!) So now, strawberries are smeared across your boobs and “overnight grains” dangle from your belt buckle. Coffee stains everyplace the strawberries don’t. The double shot of espresso has found a place on the toes of your shoes. And there it is: the beautiful sun slipping behind fast-moving storm clouds.
I knew a 40+-years-old woman once who had stage 4 uterine cancer. Her life had gone from sunshine with a fine husband who loved her senselessly, a beautiful home, lots of friends, lots of joys. to storm clouds with one visit to the doctor’s office. But did she give in to despair? Not in public, she didn’t, though I’m sure she felt it inside sometimes. Instead, she always had a smile. She was actually fun to visit because she made her guests feel at ease. She accepted good wishes with grace and help when she needed it with gratitude. She is one of the most selfless women I’ve ever known, and I’ve always admired her. I don’t know if I could be as giving if I were in her place. She made her last days in her corner of the world a good place to be and she died with peace. I know it wasn’t easy for her, but her attitude was an expression of how she faced all aspects of her life.
The events take place during the first half of 1946 when former army officer, Jamie Munro, and educated half-aborigine, Jack “Jacko” O’Brien, who head the Commonwealth Investigation Service in Darwin, are called on to assist in the rescue of Colonel John Cook, a senior operative of MI6, who has been kidnapped by unknown bandits into the jungles of Malaya.