Ride Your Heart 'Til It Breaks by Deborah Hawkins ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ BLURB: On an October evening in 1994, attorney Karen Moon, enters Jazz By the Bay in San Diego’s Seaport Village, and without warning throws away ten years of marathon labor to become a partner at prestigious Warrick, Thompson, when she falls in love with the star attraction, trumpeter Stan Benedict. Never mind that she is on a corporate spying mission to close the club so that her client Waterfront Development can hijack the prime bay location for a hotel/retail shop complex. And never mind that Stan, a world class flirt, has every woman in the audience longing to go home with him. In Stan’s music, Karen hears a deeper truth: behind the performer’s confident, shallow mask is a vulnerable, lonely man longing to be loved. Addicted to Stan and his music, Karen secretly crosses ethical boundaries and risks her career to save the club from Waterfront. She and Stan begin a tumultuous affair that culminates in an unplanned pregnancy and a hasty marriage. But their relationship is increasingly threatened by the demands of Karen’s job as a highly paid securities lawyer and by the rising crescendo of Stan’s frequent infidelities. Through mounting heartbreak, Karen struggles to hold on to Stan until they are swept apart by a tide of personal and professional loss. Thirteen years later, without warning, Stan suddenly reappears in Karen’s life to tell her he never stopped loving her. Now a superior court judge and married to Warrick Thompson partner Howard Morgan, Karen is faced with Howard’s threats to destroy her if she leaves her marriage. Ride Your Heart ‘Til It Breaks is a complex love story about loss, infidelity, forgiveness, and self-discovery. |
November 1994
Stan shrugged, picked up his horn case, and headed for his car. He threw the bag into the trunk, then turned down the path to the bay. He found the bench where he and Carrie had talked after the shows and sat down. He watched the ferry skim across the black water toward the lights of Coronado where the island glimmered against the night sky like a golden mirage.
“Get over it,” he told himself. Women came and went in his life all the time. He rarely felt anything but relief when the latest had had enough and walked away.
But Carrie haunted him. He could see her sometimes emerald, sometimes gray eyes looking up at him on stage, and her smile of delight when he hit a particularly high note as if he had done it just for her. And some nights, he had belted out the big ones to impress her.
And then there was the way she made love. It was different with a woman who loved you. Passion and fire. The way it had been with Deanna. At least, before the drugs took over her life.
He watched the ferry dock on the other side of the bay. One a.m. That should be the last run. He wondered what Carrie was doing. Probably at work in that black hole of a law firm. She had risked everything in the most important year of her career to save Harry and the club and Stan’s gig. And then he’d pranced in with Lara to drive Carrie away.
Across the bay, Stan could see that the ferry had made its last run. He got up slowly and headed up the path to his car. The aching in his heart had deepened. Tomorrow was Sunday and his day off. He wondered what Carrie was doing tomorrow.
Review: 4 stars
While this initially intrigued me it was hard for me to keep my attention on this. Loved the plot, that someone reappears in your life years later and says that he still loves you which causes more problems for you..........
Deborah grew up in the South, wrote her first novel at the of age thirteen, and has been writing ever since. In graduate school, she studied Irish Literature and came to believe all Irishmen and Southerners are born storytellers. In addition to writing, she loves music and plays the clarinet. Now that her children are grown, she devotes her time to law, music, writing, and her two Golden Retrievers, Melody and Rhythm.
Deborah taught college English and worked as a technical editor before going to law school. She worked for several large East Cost firms before coming to California in the mid-1980's where she developed a solo practice as an appellate attorney while raising her three children as a single parent. She is admitted to the bar in two states and the District of Columbia, is a certified appellate specialist, and has a Master of Laws in addition to a Masters in English. She believes that even a legal case always begins with a story.
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Winner of the 2015 Beverly Hills Book Award in the Women's Fiction Category