Crashing Into Us by Bridget Straub (Guest Post)

Please welcome author, Bridget Straub, joining us with her women's fiction of Crash Into Us!

Life is Unpredictable

I remember driving with my sister years ago, listening to the radio and staring out the window, tears running down my cheeks. It was a beautiful sunny southern California day, and all around us were people driving down the freeway, many of them with the top down, and seemingly without a care in the world. It struck me then how random life is and how you never know what others are going through.

At the time, I was hoping for a second child and feeling as though it was never going to happen for me. Luckily, I was not only blessed with a second, but also a third child. Still, I've never forgotten that drive and how it struck me that we all have trials we go through while the world continues to spin around us without notice.

My fourth and latest novel deals with a situation that is both extraordinary and also common. Extraordinary in that it is completely unexpected, and yet common in the fact that people's lives change in an instant all of the time, and we are almost never prepared when it does.

In Crashing Into Us, Allie Taylor is having a day like any other, until she receives a call that turns her world upside down. When she is told her ex-husband has been in an accident and is asking for her, she rushes to the hospital, all the while wondering why, after so many years apart, she’s the one he wants to see. When she gets to the hospital she is sucked into an unexpected vortex of emotions, which cause her to reconsider her feelings for this man that she thought she had neatly tucked away into her past.
As family gathers at the hospital, Allie convinces herself she is there for the sake of their children, Dylan, 24 and London, 22, but it soon becomes clear that she couldn’t pull herself away if she wanted to. Through a maze of emotions, she reevaluates her life, considering both where she has been and where she wants to go in the future.

Admittedly, I have never had this exact experience, but I have had to spend time in and around hospitals worrying over loved ones. I've known that feeling of having your world turned upside down. I think that is why this book was so easy to write. I think there are things within the story that everyone can relate to.

Crashing Into Us
by Bridget M. Straub
Paperback, 338 pages
Published November 12th 2013 by Bridgetstraub com
ISBN 0985438444
Goodreads | Amazon

Allie Taylor is having a day like any other, until she receives a call that turns her world upside down. When she is told her ex-husband has been in an accident and is asking for her, she rushes to the hospital, all the while wondering why, after so many years apart, she’s the one he wants to see. When she gets to the hospital she is sucked into an unexpected vortex of emotions, which cause her to reconsider her feelings for this man that she thought she had neatly tucked away into her past.
As family gathers at the hospital, Allie convinces herself she is there for the sake of their children, Dylan, 24 and London, 22, but it soon becomes clear that she couldn’t pull herself away if she wanted to. Through a maze of emotions, she reevaluates her life, considering both where she has been and where she wants to go in the future.

Excerpt:

I walked down to the elevator, got in and rode it down to the lobby. I walked outside and noted that once again it was a beautiful sunny day, only that wasn’t as comforting as the last time. That day I was struck by how the world keeps turning, no matter what goes on. I knew that people walked in and out of that hospital every day, but sometimes the people they were there for never came home.

“Stop it!” I silently screamed at myself. “He’s going to be fine. He’s going to wake up and you’ll tell him you are glad he did, and then you’ll annoy him by telling him that he should be more careful, and then you won’t hear from him for a month or two, just like always.”

I told myself to find my car and go home like a sane person would do. Like a person who had once loved Chris with all of her heart, but who had also been known to hate his guts at times. Like a woman who had been divorced for ten years and managed to put that part of her live behind her. Just find the damned car!

I couldn’t find the car. I was certain that I had parked it on the first level because I had been shocked that there had been a spot so conveniently located. Now I had the thought that perhaps it had been too good to be true. I looked around and saw that it was for emergency parking only and of course at the time it had been an emergency, hadn’t it?

I cursed and turned around; returning to the ICU, wondering if this was a sign. When I walked back into the room the kids, Linda and Tim were all playing Go Fish.

“My car has been towed,” I announced. “Deal me in.”

About the Author:

Bridget Straub is an author, artist and mom who has been writing for as long as she can remember. When she’s not blogging at http://bridgetstraub.com/she is painting or spending time with her family. Ms. Straub has published four novels, Crashing Into Us, The Salacious Marny Ottwiler, On a Hot August Afternoon and Searching for My Wand. She has also written a sitcom pilot, Bittersweet, as well as the musical Room to Grow (written with Laura Hall) She has several novels ready for future release and is currently working on a second musical.