About Drawn from Life
DRAWN FROM LIFE is a psychological suspense/new adult story about an accidental killer seeking to ease her burden of guilt following the deaths of three people in a horrific car crash. To do this, she must confront a domineering and possibly dangerous cousin in whose shadow she has lived for more than two decades.
It’s 2015 and college sophomore Emma Gillen’s future is bright. Brighter than her past, anyway, which includes the loss of her mother six years earlier and the on-again, off-again presence of her volatile cousin Lucy, the daughter of an alcoholic single mother.
Emma shares off-campus housing with Lucy, a year older and an aspiring artist. They live in a remote cabin in the western North Carolina mountains, where late autumn storms can be treacherous.
Just before Thanksgiving, Aunt Maggie’s sudden disappearance from rehab sends Lucy into an emotional tailspin. A storm moves in, stranding the cousins in their cabin; when the rain finally stops, Emma’s car is involved in an accident.
Three people die; she barely survives. Believing Emma has also died, Lucy vanishes.
Eight years later, still haunted by grief, Emma finds only a small measure of solace at her family’s art center. Struggling with a faulty memory and burdened with guilt, she cannot resolve the shame of an accidental killer.
Then Lucy returns, wanting money and bringing chaos. Should Emma bargain with her cousin to uncover the past? But bargains carry risk. As Emma sifts through the conflicting landscapes of memory, she must re-examine her own agency in the tragedy that has fueled her guilt and sense of duty to the victims, including herself.
Can Emma find forgiveness and a chance at love? Or will her cousin destroy everything?
Buy the book, and follow the author on social media:
Learn more about the writer. Visit the Author’s Website.
Like the Authors Facebook Fan Page.
Author Bio:
Sarah P. Blanchard earned a B.A. in English literature and an M.B.A. in marketing. She worked for many years in communications and marketing, but has always managed to write short fiction and poetry after-hours. On side journeys, she has been a volunteer firefighter, radio news anchor, talk show host, magazine editor, website developer, horse trainer, grantwriter for a Native American organization, and a facility supervisor for Gemini Observatory in Hawaii. For five years, Sarah taught at the University of Hawaii-Hilo. Several of her poems, essays, short stories, and a novella have won awards and been published in literary journals, and she is active in several writers’ groups. She was a 2021 Doris Betts Fiction Prize finalist. Sarah lives and writes in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina.