Excerpt from Historical Novel A River Between Them by A.L. Watkins
I’m so excited that my historical romance is out now! I’m sharing a short excerpt, so read on.
Two generations. Two love stories intertwined…
What if a piece of furniture could change your life? Antique store owner Samantha Phillips embarks on a quest to find the answer to that question after she stumbles upon a beautiful, weathered wooden trunk. Samantha immediately falls in love with the antiquity when the old, battered wardrobe ends up in her possession. Lodged inside the lining of the footlocker is a stack of old love letters and a gold locket that holds a picture of a handsome young man.
Curiosity gets the better of Samantha and she reads the passionate correspondence one by one, and learns about the love between working class William Hayes and high-society Maggie Flannery. But when Samantha comes to the end of the letters, it is unclear whether William and Maggie end up together. Driven by a force she can’t fully explain, Samantha contacts the former owner of the trunk, hoping for answers about the young couple.
When she reaches out to Maggie’s great-nephew, Bryan Donovan, he is reluctant to share his aunt’s past with a stranger, at least at first. Together, Bryan and Samantha learn the love story of William and Maggie, while discovering their own feelings for each other. Set in historic St. Charles, Missouri, the story of two star-crossed lovers from the 1920s unfolds through a series of letters and an old diary.
Excerpt
As she removed the contents of the envelope of the fifth letter something dropped in her lap. She looked down to see a gold locket on a fine chain lying on her leg. She brought the piece of jewelry to her face to get a better look at its delicate details and the oval-shaped pendant’s filigree edging. Despite its age, the necklace didn’t appear too tarnished, so she assumed it wasn’t costume. She leaned into the light provided by the lamp on the end table next to her sofa and found the small lettering that confirmed the bauble was in fact made of eighteen-karat gold.
She found the seam of the locket and slid her fingers toward it, prepared to wedge a fingernail in the fold when suddenly she stopped short. As if reading the letters and taking joy in the juicy content wasn’t bad enough, now she was stooping so low as to look inside a locket. She had a pretty good idea what was inside, but still…she was curious and she couldn’t explain why, not to herself—and certainly not to anyone else—what exactly she was looking for or why she thought she needed to find it.
She just did.
Brushing aside any remnants of guilt, Samantha pried the locket open using her thumbnail. The old piece of gold sprang open and her eyes were greeted with a photo and lock of hair. She turned her gaze to the left side of the locket’s interior, to study the picture. The young man in the photograph was devastatingly handsome. Her gaze traveled over his prominent cheekbones, angular jaw and wide set eyes. He peered right into the camera with an honest intensity that Samantha had never seen before.
His gaze was powerful and direct, but his eyes held a soft, soulful quality that made the person on the receiving end feel drawn to him. Samantha literally couldn’t look away. He was beautiful in his frankness.
“You must be William. Now I understand why Maggie kept your letters. I would’ve too,” she said softly as she ran her finger along the gold rim outlining his portrait.
Get A River Between Them at Amazon, Amazon CA, Amazon UK, iBooks, Kobo, Nook, Scribd
About the author
A.L. Watkins has worked in retail, libraries, on a collage campus and in communications before succumbing to the siren call of writing fiction.
