TUESDAY EXCERPTS: “SEVEN LETTERS”

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, First Chapter/Intros, originally hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea and now hosted by I’d Rather Be at the Beach; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by The Purple Booker.

Today’s feature is a NetGalley ARC that will be released on 10/8/19:  Seven Letters, by J. P. Monninger.

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Intro:  (Prologue)

The Irish tell a story of a man who fell in love with a fairy woman and went with her to live on an island lost to time and trouble.  They lived in a thatched cottage overlooking the sea with nothing but donkeys and gulls and white chickens to keep them company.  They lived in the dream of all lovers, apart from the world, entire to themselves, their bed an island to be rediscovered each night.

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Teaser:  I took a cab to the grocery store on the second day of my return.  I stockpiled food and bought myself two dozen yellow tulips.  I stored the groceries carefully, as one would in a desert, then put the yellow tulips in jelly jars near my desk-table.  Later that day, I burned sage again.  It was ridiculous, more ridiculous than ever, but it brought me serenity. (58%).

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Synopsis:  Kate Moreton is in Ireland on sabbatical from her teaching position at Dartmouth College when she meets Ozzie Ferriter, a fisherman and a veteran of the American war in Afghanistan. The Ferriter family history dates back centuries on the remote Blasket Islands, and Ozzie – a dual citizen of Ireland and the United States – has retreated to the one place that might offer him peace from a war he cannot seem to leave behind.

Beside the sea, with Ireland’s beauty as a backdrop, the two fall deeply in love and attempt to live on an island of their own making, away from the pressures of the outside world. Ireland writes its own love stories, the legends claim, and the limits of Kate and Ozzie’s love and faith in each other will be tested. When his demons lead Ozzie to become reckless with his life—and Kate’s—she flees for America rather than watch the man she loves self-destruct. But soon a letter arrives informing Kate that her heroic husband has been lost at sea, and Kate must decide whether it is an act of love to follow him or an act of mercy to forget.

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What do you think?  Would you keep reading?

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