In 1973 Holly meets and falls in love with Trevor, a roadie for a famous English rock and roll band. From that moment, Holly’s dreams of marriage, children, and a happy life are finally within her grasp.
Still, she worries. What is it about her that matters most to Trevor? Is he with her only for her looks? Would he still love her if he learned she suffers from a mental illness due to childhood trauma and abuse? Is her beauty enough in the long term? Or will everything else about her prove to be too much for him?
Trevor takes her with him on tour and introduces her to the circus-like backstage world of Rock and Roll. When she steps onto the band bus, she walks into a colorful, exciting adventure in a world completely different from the life that awaits her back home, where she works at a low-paying job, chases cockroaches with a shoe, and sleeps to escape the hunger.
On the bus she is immediately tested and forced to publicly declare what matters to her most in a partner. Is it money, fame and looks? Or love, with none of the above?
Holly is tested again when a member of the band develops feelings for her. He is Trevor’s childhood friend, often sought after because of his wealth and fame, just as Holly is sought after only for her looks.
When the band member’s feelings for Holly suddenly and very publicly come to light, all three of them must grapple with what will become, not a love “triangle,” but a love “circle” that threatens to break all their hearts.
Winner of the Living Now Book Awards Silver Medal
Genre: FICTION / General
Sales for this title are slow because I had to forego marketing efforts within a few months of publication. With renewed focus I can bring sales figures up.
The Skokie Swift was an express train. Hell began when the doors shut, and I was trapped on that train for twenty minutes and unable to scream aloud, though in my mind, my scream had the same pitch and cadence as the squeal of the wheels on the tracks when we rounded a curve. While the train barreled out the northern tip of Chicago and into the suburbs with no stops in between, I was subject to the kind of anxiety that keeps some people from ever boarding a plane or an elevator in their lives—rising panic, choking fear. My heart palpitated. I heard it in my ears so loudly that I heard little else.
Other passengers looked out the windows or read their newspapers. Some closed their eyes and dozed. I stiffened as the train built up speed on its tracks. My personal roller coaster—the one in my mind—inched toward the peak of its incline, then pushed itself over the crest and swept downward, out of control. No escape! The Skokie Swift moved steadily, purposefully forward toward the northwest. It moved as swiftly as its name.
I did a freefall into a full-blown anxiety attack, and no one was waiting to catch me.
I looked ahead, not seeing. I clasped my hands together tightly, and I concentrated on not screaming. I never screamed. I never gave in to the temptation to run wildly down the aisle past shocked or indifferent passengers and hurl myself out of the back door and onto the tracks. There was a deadly third rail on the tracks, and it would have ended my life swiftly. I often considered the irony of ending swiftly out the back of the swiftly moving Skokie Swift, then waded through the panic and groped for more alliteration to distract myself...don’t scream…
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Chinese
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Already translated.
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French
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Already translated.
Translated by Saida Hassan
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Author review: Very quick and very clean translation. Extremely pleased. |
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Portuguese
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Already translated.
Translated by Graziele Camargo dos Santos
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