Trails in the Sand
Author
P.C. Zick
Author Bio
P.C. Zick began her writing career in 1998 as a journalist. She’s won various awards for her essays, columns, editorials, articles, and fiction. She describes herself as a “storyteller” no matter the genre.
Her novels include A Lethal Legacy (suspense), Live from the Road (Route 66 fiction), Tortoise Stew (Florida Fiction Series), and Trails in the Sand (Florida Fiction Series). Soon to be released Native Lands the third book in the Florida Fiction Series.
She was born in Michigan and moved to Florida in 1980. Even though she now resides in Pennsylvania with her husband Robert, she finds the stories of Florida and its people and environment a rich base for her storytelling platform. Florida’s quirky and abundant wildlife – both human and animal – supply her fiction with tales almost too weird to be believable.
Her fiction contains the elements most dear to her heart, ranging from love to the environment. In her novels, she advances the cause for wildlife conservation and energy conservation. She believes in living lightly upon this earth with love, laughter, and passion.
“This is one of the most exciting times to be an author,” Ms. Zick says. “I’m honored to be a part of the revolution in writing and publishing.”
Description
Florida Fiction – Trails in the Sand is a southern drama on the scale of Anne Rivers Siddons.
When environmental writer Caroline Carlisle sets off to report on endangered sea turtles during the BP oil spill in 2010, the last thing she expects is to do is uncover family secrets. The long-kept secrets threaten to destroy her family, unless she can heal the hurts from a lifetime of lies.
To make matters worse, Caroline’s love for her late sister’s husband, Simon, creates an uproar in a southern family already set on a collision course with its past.
Using the BP oil spill timeline and facts as the backdrop, Trails in the Sand explores the fight to restore balance and peace, in nature and in a family, as both spiral toward disaster.
The battle between wildlife conservation and the oil spill serves as an example of the conflicts plaguing one family whose secrets have remained hidden until Caroline learns more about her grandfather’s history and her mother’s trauma during her teenage years. As the sea turtle leaves trails leading to the nests laid in the sand, secret journals leave another type of trail for Caroline to follow.
Trails in the Sand is set on Florida’s panhandle and the east coast near St. Augustine. Florida’s Panhandle beaches, including St. George Island, off the coast near Apalachicola in the Gulf of Mexico, are home to hundreds of sea turtle nests each summer. When the oil spill threatens to come ashore on Florida’s Panhandle beaches, conservationists and wildlife managers join together in an historic effort to save the sea turtle eggs by moving them across the state to Cape Canaveral. As the oil from BP’s oil spill continues to spew forth into the Gulf of Mexico, urgency to save Florida wildlife mounts. It’s in this atmosphere that Caroline discovers the truth about her family as she writes stories about the rescue of the eggs.
Caroline struggles to repair the rift between herself and Jodi, Simon’s daughter. Jodi is not only Caroline’s niece, but after her marriage to Simon, Jodi is now her stepdaughter. Jodi is resentful that her aunt married her father so soon after her mother’s death and neither Caroline nor Simon can break through the barrier she’s created to insulate herself from further hurt. When all three are brought together one night on a beach near Cape Canaveral for the release of the baby sea turtles, the tensions of the past collide as the hatchlings make their march to the sea. Whether any of them survive remains a mystery, but at least both the hatchlings and Caroline and her family have been given a new chance for at life.
The book is full of sea turtle facts and real-life news reports and press releases about the very real and frightening Deepwater Water spill. The book also chronicles the dangers in coal mining and ties it together with the oil spill to show that good energy conservation begins with following safe procedures and standards.
Through it all, the ancient loggerhead sea turtle serves as a reminder that life moves forward despite the best efforts to destroy it.
“P.C. Zick artfully weaves a tapestry blending the 2010 tragic events of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the West Virginia coal mine explosion with a story of lost love recaptured and family secrets gradually revealed. Ms. Zick worked as a public information specialist for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission during the oil spill and she accurately captures the mood, urgency, and fear of those events with a wonderful Hiaasen-like sense of humor mixed in. Intertwined is a tale of love and family, the vegetable garden, and the secrets that threaten to tear the family apart but ultimately makes them stronger.” From a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Biologist
Book excerpt
As the turtles sunned on rocks, a great blue heron spread its wings on the banks and lifted its large body into the air.
The heron led us down the river of our youth stopping to rest when we fell too far behind. The white spider lilies of spring covered the green banks of the Santa Fe River in north Florida.
The leaves on the trees were fully green and returned to glory after a tough winter of frosts and freezes. Wild low-growing azalea bushes were completing their blooming cycle, and the dogwoods dropped their white blossoms a month ago. The magnolia flower buds would burst into large white blossoms within a month.
Simon and I missed the peak of spring on the river. However, we finally escaped our work we on a warm Tuesday morning in late April.
“Do you remember spot where we always swam?” Simon asked. “It’s close to here if I remember correctly.”
“I think you’re right, but it’s been more than twenty years since we kayaked this river.”
Simon pulled his kayak up alongside mine. We looked at each other and smiled.
“But we’re together now,” he said.
A mullet jumped out of the water in front of us and slapped its body back into the water. We laughed.
“Still the dumbest fish in the sea,” I said.
“I hope things settle down. We should spend the dog days on the river,” Simon said.
“Maybe we can get Jodi to come with us when she gets home from Auburn,” I said.
“Don’t count on it, but we can always ask. Promise me you won’t be disappointed if she refuses.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be such a pessimist. That upsets me more than anything.”
Simon didn’t answer. We continued paddling.
Simon and I spent many days in an old canoe on this river until the summer he married my sister Amy. Now Amy was dead, and Simon and I married nine months ago. Jodi, my niece and Simon’s daughter, still reeled from the loss of her mother and the betrayal she perceived from Simon and me.
“At least winter is over,” Simon said. “Let’s hope for a quiet hurricane season.”
A turtle dove from a rock into the river as we approached. Either our voices or the sound of lapping water from our paddles sent it swimming. I was happy to note the freshwater turtles didn’t seem impacted by the atypical cold of the past few months. The sea turtles didn’t fare so well.
I followed the sea turtle story for three months from the Gulf to the Atlantic coasts of Florida. The supreme effort to rescue cold-stunned turtles and rehabilitate them for release was overwhelming in its sheer numbers of both wildlife and volunteers. As an environmental and wildlife freelance writer, I’d written dozens of stories since January on the rescue and recovery operations. Miraculously, the majority of the stunned sea turtles survived and were in the process of being released back into the warming waters.
