Quest for Destiny
Cara Swann
Author Bio
Cara Swann is a former reporter/editor. A few of her novels at Amazon.com were previously published for the early e-book market.
A widow, she lives in the Southern USA, the setting for her novels. She is passionate about animal welfare and her pets include three dogs and three cats.
She is in the process of editing/updating several unpublished past manuscripts — everything from short stories to poetry and novellas.
Her fiction is dark romantic suspense influenced by Southern and English Gothic stories with similar elements to Ann Radcliffe, Phyllis A. Whitney and Victoria Holt but adapted to modern-day 1970 through 1995.
Description
Set in a fictional area near the picturesque, historic Cades Cove region of the Smoky Mountains in the 1980s, this 60,000 word romantic suspense novel centers around the theme of reincarnated lovers from the American Civil War Era. The male character has been regressed by hypnosis, knows the past tragic history; he is seeking the woman who has been reborn in this lifetime as his soul mate. When he finds her, the two begin a beautiful romance only to learn they are being plunged back into almost the same dangerous fate that once took their lives prematurely in another time and place.
Book excerpt
As she tidied up her pottery studio, putting away instruments, Sara was glad she’d finished the pot; it would be left to dry along with the other pieces until she returned from a two-week Christmas trip to visit her parents in Newton, Virginia. She planned to fire and glaze the pieces in January, as well as add more to the collection before April, when she opened her log farmhouse, Spring Moon Bed & Breakfast, to the public again. Tourist flocked to the Smoky Mountains in early spring, and since her property in Laurel Cove bordered the misty Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee, it was an ideal location.
Sara washed her hands, thinking again of how her mother, father and younger sister, Leala now sixteen, had thought her decision to relocate near the Smokies a mistake. They had never understood her abandoning a lucrative career as a CPA in Washington D.C., leaving the ideal home they provided just an hour outside that city — a restored 1790s Federal period mansion which they had turned into a profitable country inn. It had been difficult to leave her childhood home, the place she’d been loved and cherished for twenty-six years, the memories all wonderful except for…
She shook her head, refused to relive the confusion of some of her unusual behavior when younger, and went to make sure the fire was banked, would die in the wood heater. Then, pulling on the parka, she flicked off the lights and stepped out into the deepening twilight.
If she lived here the rest of her life, and she intended to, Sara thought she’d never take for granted the awesome beauty of winter snow-crested mountain peaks, the smoky-blue haze of tremendous summer evergreens — the year-round pristine features of the natural landscape.
She stood in front of the studio, eyes lifting to the sharp snow-hazed peak of Blue Mountain shadowing her property to the east. To the west, another series of jagged mountains tapered off into the far distance. Spectacular didn’t even come near the right adjective.
Staring reverently at the log farmhouse, her footprints melted now, patches of the grayish ground showing here and there, Sara thought again of how right it felt to be here for the past two years. From the moment she’d visited Cades Cove (which was only ten miles away when the road through the mountain pass wasn’t closed in winter) she’d known that she was close to home here in Laurel Cove, exactly where she belonged.
Maybe no one else agreed with her, certainly not her family who felt she’d forsaken her Virginia roots. But the instant she saw Cades Cove, Sara had been compelled to come back, again and again, until at last she couldn’t leave. The other peculiar feelings associated with Cades Cove she avoided remembering as she hurried through the frigid evening to the house.
Entering the back door, she called, “Marge, I’m back!”
A middle-aged, robust lady said, “I have dinner ready, a big fire going. You ready to eat?” She wore a neat blue-denim dress, scarf at the neck, her gray-streaked hair stylishly short, complimenting her blue eyes and friendly smile.
Sara said, “Yes, I’m starved.” And she was grateful that Marge was such an excellent cook, hostess and all-around capable lady. A widow who lived at Spring Moon from early spring until the Christmas season, when she returned with Sara to Virginia and spent the winter months with her only daughter, Marge was indispensable help with the guests. She kept things running smoothly, while adding the special touches that visitors often wrote Sara they loved at Spring Moon Bed & Breakfast. Marge’s expertise was the result of many years working with Sara’s mother in the family business, Colton Inn.
Sara pulled off her parka, hung it on the coat rack, undone her hair, and washed up, then joined Marge in the dining room, a fire blazing before them in the fieldstone fireplace. She never tired of the charming decor Marge had helped her design; it was pure country elegance. The log walls, the polished pine floors and open-beamed ceilings — every room graced with deceptively simple, casual ornaments that were authentic American pioneer antiques. The two-story house had four large rooms downstairs, an alcove office in the entry hallway, and a modern kitchen with a small bedroom/bath for Marge. Upstairs, there were four bedrooms, each with a bathroom, three available rooms for guests.
As they ate the tasty stew Marge had cooked, chatting idly about the upcoming holidays, Sara realized she would miss the older woman’s companionship during January, February and March; but Marge deserved the time with her family. And besides, Sara knew she needed the seclusion to work on pottery.
Agreeing that the weather would be suitable for traveling tomorrow, Sara went up to her bedroom to pack while Marge did likewise in her downstairs bedroom.
Stepping into her bedroom, Sara smiled at how it contrasted with the rest of the rustic house; her room was romantic, warmly inviting, distinctly feminine. Vintage rose wallpaper complimented a brass bed with matching rose coverlet, bed ruffle and lacy pillow shams, a flowery carpet rug on the floor.
Dried rose flower arrangements were placed on the bedside Queen Anne tea table, a Sheraton dresser with mirror and a small white sugar chest; a cheval mirror was in one corner, near a large walk-in closet where she grabbed a suitcase and began selecting clothing to pack. The thought of being gone for even two weeks, naturally an enjoyable reunion with her family, still filled her with bleak emptiness. Sara chided herself harshly, feeling foolish for the inexplicable loneliness already clutching at her heart.
If she ever dwelled on it very long, Sara became frustrated, so she fought the obsession she felt for the area, tried to put it in perspective. However, she knew that her talent for pottery was in some way born of this same obsession, a driving desire that obliterated sensible rationalizing. Her instinctive talent for pottery making, her compulsion to live near Cades Cove, these were unreasonable and inexplicable, yet as necessary as breathing.
For a brief moment, Sara had a vivid flashback of the time she’d first seen the cabin in Cades Cove, the overwhelming images that flooded her mind, sent her running away…her heart aching with fear and longing.
She quickly pushed it aside, went down to join Marge for hot chocolate and conversation by the fireside. But when she went to bed, Sara couldn’t fall asleep, tossing restlessly until after midnight.
At length she dozed, then went deeper and deeper asleep…the nightmare creeping into her slumber, slipping ominously into her peaceful rest, flaring images of being in a dark place, her heart beating wildly, her feeling of sadness, her name echoing: Rebekah, Rebekah, Rebekah…footsteps coming, the fear growing… loud, shouting male voices, a gunshot, the piercing burn in her back. Then, floating, floating in a bright swirl of light…
Awakening with a start, she sat upright, heart pounding, eyes wide, relieved by the ever-present nightlight glow. Why, why did she have these vivid recurring nightmares? Since age twelve, when they began, she’d been plagued by these shattering images, an irrational fear of the dark. Only when she’d visited Cades Cove did she come to realize that in some unfathomable way, the nightmares and Cades Cove were connected. But how? She didn’t want to acknowledge it, but perhaps she was experiencing extrasensory phenomena, receiving psychic images of a long-ago murder, of the girl Rebekah’s death…?
Shuddering, Sara ran a hand through her tangled hair, deliberately forcing the harrowing nightmare out of her thoughts, resigned to live with the plaguing dreams, unable to understand or comprehend what seemed infinitely unknowable.
Pulling the quilt up, she snuggled down and tried to get some sleep for the trip tomorrow, knowing it would be exhausting and the beginning of a long holiday until she could return to her beloved mountains.
Author Website
http://madmadworld.blogspot.com/
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