Nominated for multiple literary awards, BRIDGES has been called "poignant, sentimental yet down-to-earth, and just plain beautiful." It has been compared with Harper Lee's classic, "To Kill a Mockingbird." Chesapeake is a sleepy place in June of 1953. Construction on the O’Bannion River Bridge is on schedule and almost half complete, but outside circumstances threaten to slow its progress to a crawl. The engineers assume a company bureaucrat will appear to solve the problem, but it’s seven-year-old Lindy who proves the unlikely heroine. Unforgettable characters such as Mrs. Wyndham, Daddy Newport, Mr. O’ Malley, Lindy and her father all live on in Bridges. If ever in your heart’s travels you cross a bridge of your own, you’ll find Lindy's legacy of steel, sweat and love still hovering over the waters.
L.P. Sloan knew she wanted to write while still in elementary school and wrote many short stories and articles for local papers. But her plans were put on temporary hold while she raised four children, something she considers not only a pleasure but also her most valuable catalyst to imagination. Not returning to her early dreams until she was a grandmother six times over, she's since written a number of short stories that appeared in literary magazines, finished and saw published her first novel, Bridges, and is currently working on the second.
The title of Sloan's first novel, Bridges, might be said to be deceptive in its simplicity. The story is about bridges all right, both the physical and metaphorical kinds. But it's about Chesapeake, Virginia, in the 1950's, too, and Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan in the 1920's. It's about trains and camp cars and good Southern cooks. Chevrolets. Good (and Bad)Samaritans. It's about looking beneath the superficial and taking time to learn people's stories about the journeys that brought them to their present circumstances. But mostly it's about a father and a daughter and the unconditional love they have for each other that brings all the components into relevance. And it all started because dynamite is dangerous stuff!
Sloan began teaching herself to read at age 4, though not with books. One of her favorite places to pick flowers was a nearby cemetary, and there was plenty of time to make sense of the names and dates on the tombstones. She learned to count in an equally unorthodox manner as well: at her father's knee over a hand or two of five-card stud. But most importantly she learned to love the stories her family told, and suspecting that many were untrue, she began spinning her own yarns with her invention of Shirley West, her imaginary friend. During Sloan's earliest years, which she describes as free and unstructured as they only could have been in the hills of rural Kentucky, the nearest potential playmate was miles away, so Shirley West was a practical necessity. But Shirley's creation enabled Sloan to begin to construct wild adventures for Shirley and herself, and that gave her stories of her own to tell the family in the evening. Some of her stories made the family roll with laughter, especially her Aunt Ted, and Sloan quickly decided she enjoyed doing that.
Sloan, now retired and living on a quiet island in Michigan, doesn't spend much time perusing tombstones anymore, and if she still has imaginary friends, she won't admit to it. But she still keeps her eyes open and observes the people around her. She's not forgotten that everyone is the star of their own story, and some stories are worth writing down.
