Time after Time
Hi Folks,
This is going to be a very short blog. . . .
Bye Folks!
Just kidding!
https://robertwestauthor.com/time-after-time/
Can you hear me? It’s awfully loud out there these days. A universal volume control might be worth millions the way everyone is screaming for or against just about everything. The biggest issue in American history, of course, was slavery. We went to war over that one — the bloodiest war in American history. More Americans died in that war than in WWI and WWII combined. Southerners often call it “the war between the states.” The rest of us call it the “Civil War.”
My latest book, Echo in the Wind, is set in Charleston, South Carolina. It was there, you know, that the Civil War began 155 years ago.
The Mystery Today
The major portion of the book is set in Charleston here and now. Lauren Elliston, a member of one of Charleston’s elite families, is the victim of a vicious crime, but her body is missing and she is presumed dead. Many branches of law enforcement pool their resources to find her and apprehend her attacker. Special circumstances bring Kelley Bryant, a former FBI investigator forcibly retired after a critical injury, into the case. The case goes nowhere until this former agent finds a connection to a crime buried in the past.
A Mystery Long Ago
A second story line follows the life of a girl growing up in Charleston during the years preceding the Civil War. She grows up, not only in the same city as our missing victim, but in the same house, on the same plantation and in the same family from which our victim is descended.
I spent several years studying what it was like to live in Charleston both today and in the years preceding the Civil War — the plantations, elegant ladies in hoop skirts, men dueling to the death, grand balls and lavish garden parties. . . . And, of course, slave auctions.
Issues for Women
There were, however, other issues besides slavery, many of them involving women’s issues. Compared to those days, the women of today are as free as birds in the sky.
Are people just Things?
But what ties these stories together is a broader issue — Objectification. Objectification is a big word for treating a person like an object or a thing. If you think about that word, you will realize that it is behind many evils, including slavery, crime, labor conflicts, bullying relationships and the mistreatment of women.
“Echo in the Wind,” is work of fiction, not an expose of social issues, but aspects of all these issues are depicted in the dual time frames as part of the story. I hope you will enjoy the colorful and passionate characters in both stories as they romance, battle and strive to make sense of the startling revelations and realizations they encounter on the way to an explosive conclusion.
