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Burning Bridges Kindle Edition
Not your typical "secret baby" romance. This Southern tale of love lost, love found will stir your emotions!
Consider the role of strangers in our lives. An unknown postman in Virginia hides a bag of mail one day. His simple action set in motion untold consequences for many others—strangers—all over the country. How many bridges were burned in that forgotten mail pouch?
Sara Richards’s world is rocked when three love letters from 1970 are delivered decades late. The letters were written by Paul Steinert, a young sailor who took her innocence with whispered words of love and promises of forever before leaving for Vietnam. Sara is left behind, heartbroken and secretly pregnant, yearning for letters she never received.
Then he died.
Now, years later, she discovers the betrayal wasn’t Paul’s, when her mother confesses to a sin that changed their lives forever. How can Sara reveal to Paul’s parents that they have a granddaughter they’ve missed the chance to know? Even worse, how will she find the words to tell her daughter that she’s lived her life in the shadow of a lie?
Picking her way through the minefields of distrust and betrayal, Sara finds that putting her life together again while crossing burning bridges will be the hardest thing she’s ever done.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Recommended Read: 5 Pixies : -- Twila King, Dark Angel Reviews
5 Stars: -- Amelia Richard, Ecataromance
5 Hearts: -- Brenda Talley, The Romance Studio
5 Stars: --- Anne Boling, Review Your Book
5 Cups: --- Krista, Coffee Time Romance
"Burning Bridges is a story that I feel many people would enjoy. I laughed and cried throughout this entertaining novel. The message in this novel is universal and could be any parent trying to ensure that their children receive the best in life. It was very easy to relate to the characters in this wonderfully written story. I was very taken with the characters; I felt the sorrow and anger of each one. This story flowed relatively well and it could be the life of anyone walking past you on the street. The dialogue was realistic and the storyline was well developed, consistent, and resolved at the end." -- Breia Brickey, Paranormal Romance
5 Heart: "I absolutely adored this story by Ms. Krist. She grabbed me from the very first page and had me riding a roller coaster of emotions throughout the entire story. This story was packed with real emotion and circumstances that made you walk away wondering if the tables were turned and this happened to you, how would you respond to finding out your parents lied to you after all these years had passed? There was a powerful -WOW- factor involved with this story. I loved the unique and extremely creative storyline Ms. Krist came up with. I feel that any reader who picks this story up will enjoy it just as much as I did. I can-t wait to read more stories from this author." --Diana Coyle, Night Owl Romance
Product details
- ASIN : B083HN3ZG2
- Publisher : Nomad Authors Publishing (January 20, 2020)
- Publication date : January 20, 2020
- Language : English
- File size : 1.0 MB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 261 pages
- Customer Reviews:
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- Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2020Family drama filled with intensified emotional moments repeatedly takes place in this extremely compelling story, where every single situation is convincingly portrayed with much realism. From what circumstances cause an event to occur to how an individual reacts to any happenings, I was pulled into each vividly described incident and became eager to learn if there would be any consequences. The impact on quite a few of the featured characters is often very unexpected, and what choices they choose to make could greatly alter not only their lives but those close to them, too. Rarely does a story come along where I am touched in countless ways because of how much a scene affects me, yet this writer constantly does so with her first release. The name of Anne Krist will become recognized as an author who conveys genuine and heightened feelings between her memorable characters.
When Sara Richards receives letters that she should have gotten thirty-five years ago, she eventually discovers these three pieces of lost mail were not the only correspondence she never saw. A fling with a Navy sailor before he was sent to Vietnam left her despondent when Paul Steinert leaves and no word is ever heard from him again, especially when she ended up pregnant. But upon learning that Paul not only sent these letters but more that were purposely kept from her could drastically change the life of Sara and her grown daughter, depending on her next decision.
With surprising twists and believable interplay between characters, BURNING BRIDGES is an unforgettable love story filled with passionate desires and potent emotions. I was totally stunned at times, because some facts were definitely not anticipated. As Sara tries to make sense of what happened in the past and how it led to her current existence, she keeps uncovering truths which add extra turmoil to her life. All that took place when she was just a teenager now seems almost overwhelming to her as an adult. Sara knows that whatever choices she makes in the present will have a lasting effect on a large number of lives, and she must move forward carefully or the price could be too high. I will long remember this outstanding story, where honest feelings are expressed with much sincerity and the characters are particularly true-to-life.
- Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2020Sara Richards was young and innocent when she fell in love with Paul Steinert, a sailor who would soon leave for Vietnam. The quicker the better as far as her parents were concerned. All too soon he was gone, leaving Sara pregnant and devastated that he’d walked away and forgotten her. Then the news Paul had been killed in Vietnam, not knowing he had a baby daughter. Decades later Sara’s life is thrown into turmoil when three love letters from Paul Steinert, written in 1970, are delivered. The betrayal was not his but her parents who deliberately kept all those yearned for letters from her. Sara must make choices and the first is to tell Paul’s parents they have a grown granddaughter. Knocking on their door was incredibly hard but nothing prepared her for what was on the other side of that door. Paul very much alive.
We are not the same people we were thirty years ago, and this is one of the bridges Sara and Paul must cross – if they can.
- Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2009BURNING BRIDGES by Anne Krist is a powerful love story which reminds us that real love is imperfect and complex, but well worth having. Sara and Paul were young lovers kept apart by manipulation and self-doubt. Sara believes Paul was killed in Vietnam, and he never knew that she bore his child. Decades later, Sara receives recently discovered letters written by Paul from Vietnam. Her mother had blocked most of the letters they had written to each other. Her father had told her that Paul had been killed in the line of duty. Sara decides to visit Paul's parents to tell them that they have a grown daughter. When she reaches his family's farm, she finds Paul himself! Many deep emotional issues are faced before the love which Paul and Sara have always felt for each other burns old bridges and builds new ones into the future.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2021At the tender age of seventeen, Sara meets the love of her life. Paul is a few years older, a Navy man about to be sent to Vietnam. Though he knows hanging out with the lovely teen is dangerous, the emotional connection between them is so powerful that he just can’t resist. On the eve of his departure they surrender to their mutual passion, then part, both promising to write faithfully.
After a few letters, though, Sara hears nothing from the man upon whom she bestowed her innocence. Has he forgotten her so soon? Then she discovers she’s pregnant from their one glorious night together and her life disintegrates. Instead of going away to college, she moves to another town to stay with her aunt, pretends to have been married to a soldier who died in Southeast Asia, and soon gives birth to a daughter. Her parents want her to give up the girl for adoption, but the usually obedient Sara rebels. Paula, as she names the baby, is her only remaining link to the man she still loves despite his silence and apparent indifference.
Paul is truly smitten by Sara, despite her youth. Determined to marry her when he returns from the war, he eagerly awaits her promised missives, but after one or two notes, he hears no further word from her. Eventually he comes to believe she deceived him about her feelings – that he was just a fling for a frivolous teenager. He barely escapes death in Vietnam. When he returns to the U.S. he looks up the woman who still owns his heart, only to discover she’s been faithless, marrying another serviceman and bearing his child as soon as Paul’s out of the picture.
This is the prelude to Anne Krist’s emotionally intense second chance romance Burning Bridges. The actual novel takes place years later. Sara is in her fifties, her daughter Paula in her thirties, when a freak incident uncovers the truth: Sara’s parents had intercepted her letters to Paul and vice versa, allowing the young lovers to believe they’d been duped and dumped. Sara’s father even lied about Paul’s death.
Ms. Krist does an amazing job portraying Sara’s complicated and ambiguous feelings in response to this revelation. Her entire life has been derailed, her heart’s desire snatched from her grasp, all because of her parents’ deception. I was so angry on her behalf I would not have shied away from fictional murder! As she struggles to come to terms with this horrific betrayal, she decides to visit Paul’s parents on their Iowa farm and let them know they have a daughter. To her shock, she finds that Paul is still alive, living and working with his brother on the family homestead, deeply embittered and fiercely lonely.
He’s nearly as astonished as Sara when she shows up. But it will take a great deal of time and effort to heal the wounds they’ve unintentionally inflicted on one another. Burning Bridges chronicles their mistrust, their misunderstandings and their anger as they struggle to accept and move on. The incandescent connection from decades earlier is still there, still real – but perhaps that just isn’t enough.
I deeply enjoyed this novel for its complexity, subtlety and intensity. However it strained my credibility to some extent. Would a brief, youthful affair really brand these two people so deeply? Would their love really survive forty years of their separate lives? I guess if you’re reading romance, you have to believe that a soul mate connection is unbreakable and forever. Otherwise the genre just doesn’t work.
I was also rather irritated by Paul’s self-centeredness and jealousy. He’s incredibly quick to think the worst of Sara in every situation, repeatedly branding her a slut and a liar, even when she has proven she’s sincere. Obviously he was hurt before and still bears the scars, but common decency should suggest he give her the benefit of the doubt.
I realize that my reactions to Paul, like my fury with Sara’s mother, indicates that Ms. Krist managed to make these characters very real to me. That in itself is a measure of this book’s quality.