Timothy Nichelson

The Simplistic Sign of Life Timothy Nichelson

John Walton had the world at his fingertips, that was until he met Beth Sumner. A self-described ugly duckling, Beth was anything other than ordinary. She was beautiful in every sense of the word, yet somehow, she seemed not to know it. Then, after one innocent glass of wine at dinner, and with each intoxicating breath after, lightning would strike. Indeed, it would strike once more, doing so on that first weekend sail out to the island, and again, with that first heart-stopping kiss. Then, as if in a fairytale, the couple sets sail to live the American dream, one that transforms into a living nightmare that crumbles all around them in a mangled mess of metal, glass, and steel. Afterward, now dealing with what would be a staggering blow to the heart, lost in the darkest places of the mind, Beth spirals out of control. The young woman, perilously falling over that invisible edge of reality. Then, after an eventful night in a dark, seedy motel room, Beth's version of reality begins to unwind as the shattered visions of her nightmares unravel right before her eyes. A few months after, a form of resolution arrives in a bottle that washes up on a cold, wet beach just as the dying embers of hope burnout in John's emerald green eyes. And, in that bottle, a touch of salvation in a letter that John had searched for all these months. A letter to explain what John did not know. A message in a bottle from Beth asking him to find Emily. Beth, imploring her husband to let faith and fate show him the way.