It’s 1985 and pampered psychotherapist Lauren Olive loses her job, the love of her life to his hairdresser and is forced to move to a backwoods bungalow as a drug couselor in a rural jail.
Escape Routes
by Marsh Rose
Genre
Historical Women’s Fiction
It’s 1985 and psychotherapist Lauren Olive, a pampered Baby Boomer in the California wine country, has never owned a bank account, lived without a man, or seen the dark side of life. But after she loses her job, and then the love of her life abandons her for his hairdresser, she’s forced to move to a decrepit bungalow in the backwoods and accept work as a drug counselor in a rural jail.
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Lies and Love in Alaska
by Marsh Rose
Genre
Women’s Fiction, Romance
To stop the meddling of her matchmaker friends, divorcee Annalee fakes an affair with an Alaskan bush pilot whose profile she has seen in a magazine about bachelors in that rugged environment. The plan backfires when he appears in her small California town and lures her to his remote cabin with stories about the magnetic pull of the Last Frontier and the promise of lasting love.
In ways she never imagined, she finds herself falling for both the pilot and Alaska in spite of the bears, blizzards, peculiar neighbors, pyromaniac ex-girlfriend, stack of love letters hidden in a pantry and evident truth to what they say about single men in Alaska: the odds are good, but the goods are odd. Before Annalee can sever her ties in California and move north, a shocking telephone call from an unknown woman rocks her world and catapults her into a whole new way of life.
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LIES AND LOVE IN ALASKA
PART ONE
CALIFORNIA, 1989
Chapter 1
The Odds Are Good
It was the day after Christmas. Annalee Perkins leaned on her counter and listened to the rain pinging into a galvanized bucket in the next aisle. She dreaded the coming hours. Only Valentine’s Day was as demoralizing as the holiday season at Home And Garden Land. Around her, fellow H.A.G.L. workers drifted in, hung their sodden rain gear and began to prepare for the long day ahead.
The intercom roared to life. Feedback sliced along the cinder block walls, then Annalee heard the voice of her boss Marvin. “Stupefied,” he thundered. “Five letters, sixty-three down, third letter Z.” Marvin began each day with the morning paper’s crossword and he seldom finished it alone. There was a moment of silence, then a reply boomed from the bookkeeper’s microphone.
“Dazed.”
Annalee sighed. Her knees ached and she felt older than her 40 years. Reluctantly she shifted her gaze to the window. Outside in the rain, ten women had formed a line at the door. Their clothing, from muddy blue jeans to elegant pants suits, represented the wide range of incomes in the rural northern California wine country. But their faces wore nearly identical expressions of dismay. Each woman carried an object—a bathroom scale, a hose attachment or a set of crescent wrenches, some with festive wrapping paper still attached. When H.A.G.L.’s hangar-like doors opened, they would stride to Annalee’s counter and imply that she, maven of the complaints department, was somehow to blame because their husbands or lovers had shopped for Christmas gifts at the hardware store when they should have been at the jeweler’s. Then Annalee would spend the day issuing return receipts, doling out refunds, pleading for stock boys and occasionally reassuring a crestfallen customer that the customer was indeed worth more, so much more than this offensive dashboard cover and matching automotive cup holder and trash receptacle.
“Men,” Annalee murmured. “They can not accomplish even the most simple requirement of love. A gift.” She congratulated herself. Never again would she find a brightly-wrapped garbage disposal brush under the tree. And while she would pass Valentine’s Day alone, she would not open another box with a bow to find a selection of AA, AAA and D batteries.
She reached for a shop broom and turned to her immediate chore, sweeping up the evidence of mice. H.A.G.L. was damp and drafty to the loyal but long-suffering staff, but for all other species its accommodations were a luxury relative to wintering in the muddy field outside. So with the freezing December rains came a parade of insects, amphibians, birds, bats and rodents to join the swarms of customers.
Someone called her name. She looked up to see her friend Ivy, The Duchess Of Kitchenware, with her faux tiara anchored in her hair by a rubber band under her chin. "Got something for you," she called. "Meet me in the staff lounge for lunch." She waved what appeared to be a magazine. Knowing Ivy, it would be something in the realm of dating, being single, or women her age finding love. Or at least sex.
Annalee sighed again.
Marsh Rose is a freelance writer, psychotherapist and college educator. Her short stories have appeared in a variety of publications including Cosmopolitan Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Carve Magazine, Hippocampus Magazine, and New Millennium Writings where she took first prize for creative nonfiction in 2018. This is her second novel. She lives in the north San Francisco Bay Area with her greyhound, Adin.
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