Escape Routes

May 17, 2024

Escape Routes

It’s 1985 and pampered psychotherapist Lauren Olive loses her job, the love of her life to his hairdresser and is forced to move to a backwoods bungalow as a drug couselor in a rural jail.

Escape Routes

by Marsh Rose

Genre: Historical Women’s Fiction

It’s 1985 and psychotherapist Lauren Olive, a pampered Baby Boomer in the California wine country, has never owned a bank account, lived without a man, or seen the dark side of life. But after she loses her job, and then the love of her life abandons her for his hairdresser, she’s forced to move to a decrepit bungalow in the backwoods and accept work as a drug counselor in a rural jail.

At her new job, the inmates view her wide-eyed naivete with hilarity and her hardened coworkers resent her middle-class roots. Worse, the bungalow seems poised to collapse around her. If Lauren is going to survive financially, avoid going back to live with her parents, and regain normality, she’ll need to leave her little-girl ways behind. But success doesn’t come without struggle. Surrounded by her crusty landlord, the jail’s seasoned deputies, skeptical inmates and a new love interest, Lauren must confront challenges she never could have imagined in her comfortable city life.

Escape Routes is a tale of maturity under duress. It speaks to the emerging audience of readers who want stories of growth and accomplishment by strong women in compelling situations. Although it is a work of fiction, it offers a glimpse into rural American criminal justice during the 1980s, a time when addiction treatment for inmates was in its formative years. Its narrative captures genuine lifestyles, concerns, speech, and behavior without demonizing, demeaning, or glamorizing the characters on either side of the bars.

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Lies and Love in Alaska

by Marsh Rose

Genre: Women’s Fiction, Romance

To stop the meddling of her matchmaker friends, divorcee Annalee fakes an affair with an Alaskan bush pilot whose profile she has seen in a magazine about bachelors in that rugged environment. The plan backfires when he appears in her small California town and lures her to his remote cabin with stories about the magnetic pull of the Last Frontier and the promise of lasting love.

In ways she never imagined, she finds herself falling for both the pilot and Alaska in spite of the bears, blizzards, peculiar neighbors, pyromaniac ex-girlfriend, stack of love letters hidden in a pantry and evident truth to what they say about single men in Alaska: the odds are good, but the goods are odd. Before Annalee can sever her ties in California and move north, a shocking telephone call from an unknown woman rocks her world and catapults her into a whole new way of life.

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Marsh Rose is a freelance writer, psychotherapist and college educator. Her short stories have appeared in a variety of publications including Cosmopolitan Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Carve Magazine, Hippocampus Magazine, and New Millennium Writings where she took first prize for creative nonfiction in 2018. This is her second novel. She lives in the north San Francisco Bay Area with her greyhound, Adin.

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