Women's Fiction
Date Published: 7/27/2019
Publisher: Acorn Publishing
Claire Blackwell can’t find that damn white light. Thanks to a mishap at an intersection, she’s dead and stuck somewhere between Heaven and what seems like Hell as she is forced to watch her husband and children unravel without her. While she struggles to find answers for her limbo state, her family begins to see her, offering what she believes, is a gift of second chances.
As she navigates through this new, untouchable world and the challenges it creates, she is forced to face some sad and potentially dangerous truths. Determined, she works to mend her relationship with her family, but her stubborn teenage son refuses to acknowledge her, and when tensions escalate with his long-time bully, her inability to control the physical world around her leaves her fearing for her family’s safety. With her time running out, she must find a way to save them before the progress she has made is lost and she fades from this world forever.
Read an Excerpt:
About the Author
Back in the kitchen, Brad stood at the
counter, amused by something on his phone while he sipped his coffee.
“Did you see this on Facebook?” He turned his
phone screen in my direction.
“I haven’t been on Facebook in ages. Too busy
for that time-suck.”
But truthfully, it wasn’t the time that kept
me away as much as it was the lives of my “friends”, which always sounded
monumentally better than my own, that stopped me from scrolling through the
pages. The job promotions; the endless pictures of exotic vacations; the
perfect children doing perfect things; the perfect, perfect lives everyone
seemed to live. Everything and everyone were perfect on Facebook, and although
deep down I knew no one lived the utopian life they portrayed on social media,
the braggery still ate at me and left holes of inadequacy and unhappiness.
“Bridget Radcliff just published a novel.
Isn’t she a friend of yours?”
“What?” I
glanced at Brad’s phone. Bridget’s post made its way to his page from a friend
of a friend of a friend in the small, claustrophobic world of fake-believe.
“Looks like it made it onto Amazon’s
bestseller list.”
“Wow, fantabulous,” I said without an ounce of
energy in my voice. “Another smut novel makes it onto the bestseller list. And
if you must know, she’s an acquaintance, not a friend.”
I didn’t
know if it was really a smut novel, but I assumed it was only because I
couldn’t imagine Bridget writing anything else. But this, I admit, was one of
my flaws. I assumed a lot about everything. I assumed I’d marry a prince and
become a princess. I assumed I knew everything there was to know at fifteen. I
assumed I’d want sex every day for the rest of my life and my marriage to Brad
would be like living inside a rainbow every day. I assumed I wouldn’t miss my
career when I stayed home to raise the kids. I assumed my children would be the best at
everything because I assumed I would be the best mother there ever was. But
now, even with all I knew about assumptions, about how they are idealistic
dreams I refused to prove wrong, I still gave them weight in my life. Why would
assuming Bridget wrote something scandalous be any different?
A little jealousy bounced within me. Even with
Bridget being a divorced mother of two, she somehow found the time to write a
best-selling novel. And that picture of her on Brad’s phone, all trim and
sunshiny-beautiful holding her book, lit a fuse in me, or maybe it was already
lit but had met the nitroglycerine.
In any
case, I was ready to explode. I moved to the sink and gazed out the window,
counting slowly to ten, fully aware of the emptiness growing within me. Each
person’s success reminded me of my own career as a teacher I’d willingly given
up for this.
About the Author
Jan Steele grew up in the burbs of Chicago and after thirty-two years of shoveling snow, moved to Southern California with her husband and children. She has taught everything from Kindergarten through high school but found her passion for writing years later while living as an expat in Asia for four years. She’s a contributing author of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Miracles and More (2018), shares a blog with her sister-in-law, and is an MFA student at UC Riverside. In addition to writing, she loves to travel, volunteer, watch college basketball and sunsets. She’s also passionate about shedding light on the lasting effects of bullying.
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