Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Nan Rossiter | Exclusive Excerpt: PROMISES TO KEEP
Author Guest / April 19, 2021

Maeve felt her heart pound. In the time Ivy had been there, she’d already wandered off twice. The staff all knew she should have been placed in a home more suited to someone with Alzheimer’s, but Ivy’s son had begged the powers that be to let her stay at Willow Pond until a bed became available at the new memory care facility opening in Savannah, and everyone suspected that a little extra money had changed hands to make it happen. Now, Maeve turned to see if the old woman had moved to a different seat, but all she saw were seventeen crooked backs straightening up as seventeen pairs of eyes peered over the railing, and then all she heard were seventeen voices starting to whisper. Maeve hurried down the steps. “Ivy?” she called, scanning the wide front lawn and gardens. “Ivy!” she shouted, feeling the icy fingers of worry grip her heart. “She’s right there,” a deep voice behind her called. Maeve turned and saw Aristides Lincoln standing at his full height–six feet two instead of his hunched-over five feet ten–pointing. Maeve turned, and through the sun-dappled curtain of willow branches and wispy Spanish moss, she spied a tiny figure…

Nan Rossiter | The Role of Heartache
Author Guest / May 30, 2011

I have always loved books fraught with heartache, star-crossed lovers, and infidelity. And I’ve always liked novels and movies that allow the reader or viewer to know a little bit more than the characters do. Who can forget the scene in The Bridges of Madison County when Francesca grips the door handle of her husband’s truck and watches, utterly torn, as her lover Robert Kincaid drives away? Our hearts ache for her indecision and we want to cry out: “Go to him!” Equally memorable is the scene at the end of Doctor Zhivago when Yuri is travelling on a tram and, through the window, sees his beloved Lara. He struggles to get off the tram and, as he tries to catch up with her, he has a fatal heart attack. Our hearts ache and we just want to cry out to Lara: “Stop! Turn around!” But Lara hurries away, never knowing Yuri died trying to reach her. In Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, we know Juliet is going to wake up and we want to tell Romeo, “Hold on!” If he had only waited a moment more before plunging the dagger into his chest, Juliet would have woken up and everything…