Broken Chain (ePub)

A fast-moving small-town family story in the tradition of Mary Higgins Clark.

It's 1964. Sixteen-year-old Brody Rivers is not only an outsider, he's part Native in a bigoted town and his father is in jail for murder. Brody takes over a rural grocery route, driving a battered old grocery truck from one farm to another. The farms on his route have been in the same families for generations, and he senses disapproval and hostility from his customers.

When he first arrives at the Porter farm, he senses something else - a strange empathy toward the young girl who lives there, Tricia Porter. As time passes, it intensifies until he believes that he can sense the emotions of several other people in his life as well. These connections are frightening, causing him physical pain. He worries that he will go crazy, just like his tormented grandmother.

In 1953, when Brody was barely five years of age, she told him that he had the "gift", just like she did. But no one will explain it to him. With no insight into the abilities of an empath, Brody feels that his gift is actually a curse.

The friendliest person on his grocery route is Lizzy Baker, a lonely married woman who hates the isolation of the country and barely tolerates the tight-knit farming community. Before long Lizzy invites him into her farmhouse. Her advances add to his burdens.

As the years go by, he's tormented by his affair with Lizzy and his strange relationship with Tricia Porter. His empathic and psychic ability causes vivid and recurring nightmares. They haunt him, robbing him of sleep, and they revolve around Tricia Porter. Brody's concern for her safety deepens. At the same time, his involvement with Lizzy could easily destroy him.

When a life-threatening January blizzard comes out of nowhere, so does the ghostly image of a woman who appears to be from a past life. The confrontation that erupts between the main characters is as intense as the storm that crippled Huron County during the winter of 1971.

This is the full Broken Chain Saga, including the four parts Seduction, Betrayal, Entrapment, and Revelation - all available as stand-alone works.