Alice Kessler spent nine years in prison for the attempted murder of the drunk driver who killed her eldest son. Now she has returned home to Grays Island to reconnect with the son she left behind. Her little boy, Jeremy, an angry teenager now, is wrongly accused of rape, and so mother and son are thrown together in a desperate attempt to prove his innocence. At the same time, Alice must battle the man responsible for putting her behind bars, who has since become the mayor of her hometown. She is aided by Colin McGinty, a recovering alcoholic and 9/11 widower. Colin has also recently returned to the island in the aftermath of the death of his grandfather, a famous artist best known for his haunting portrait, Woman in Red, which happens to be of Alices grandmother. In a tale that weaves the past with the present, we come to know the story behind the portrait, of the forbidden wartime romance between William McGinty and Eleanor Styles, and the deadly secret that bound them more tightly than even their love for each other. A secret that, more than half a century later, is about to be unburied, as Alice and Colin are drawn into a fragile romance of their own and the ghost of an enemy from long ago surfaces in the form of his grandson, the very man responsible for sending Alice to prison.
I was born on the Fourth of July, and it's been fireworks ever since. I began writing at age eight, with short stories and poems, and I haven't looked back since. From the early days of mostly collecting rejection slips, I went on to publish thirty-two novels for young adults, thirteen (and still counting) of women's fiction, as well as numerous short stories and magazine articles, and one cookbook.
Often I'm asked where I get my ideas. Fortunately, I have a wealth of life experiences to draw from. Starting when I dropped out of college to get married, at age eighteen. Two years later I was divorced, with a baby son and no means of support. I ended up briefly on welfare, and stood in line for government surplus food. But every cloud has its silver lining, and this one led to my determination to make it as a professional writer. I borrowed a typewriter, and lacking a desk, plunked it down on the living room floor. The rest, as they say, is history.
Following a string of young adult novels, I published my first adult novel, GARDEN OF LIES, in 1986. The saga of baby girls switched at birth---one rich, the other poor---went on to enjoy a combined total of 16 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, in hardcover and paperback. Though there's no such thing as an overnight success, I felt like one, having gone in a matter of months from not knowing how I was going to pay the rent to wondering what I was going to do with all that money. The first thing I did was fulfill a fantasy born of years of wearing hand-me-downs: I walked into Saks Fifth Avenue and bought a dress...without even looking at the price tag!
I've since gone on to write many more novels. My most recent, which came out in June of '07, is WOMAN IN RED, a very special story about a woman just out of prison and a man struggling to get back on his feet after losing his wife on 9/11. Look for it in trade paperback in May of this year. I also have another hardcover coming out,in June, titled DOMESTIC AFFAIRS ---a Cinderalla story in reverse: Riches to rags but with a happy ending. I'll be posting sample chapters on my website at www.eileengoudge.com, so stay tuned. I would love to hear your comments once you've read the book! And, remember, there's always more where that came from...
