New Fiction Wednesday!

Here’s the latest from my friend Allie Pleiter – can’t wait to read this one!

The gallant sequel to Pleiter’s San Francisco historical, “Masked by Moonlight,” MISSION OF HOPE follows an unlikely hero and his surprising young love as the pair help the city heal from it’s massive 1906 earthquake.

MISSION OF HOPE

by Allie Pleiter

Steeple Hill Love Inspired Historical

August 2010

ISBN#: 978-0-373-82842-5

A note from Alllie:
Those Amazing Details

I was pouring through a history book on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fires, looking for a big story. It is an epic event in American history, after all. What I found was a tiny, powerful detail. Almost a footnote, it was minor announcement made by San Francisco’s Postmaster just after the disaster. Arthur Fisk declared to the city that mail would be delivered–no matter what form it took (for paper was very rare)–and regardless of any postage affixed. Fisk understood that communication was absolutely vital to healing. People needed to tell each other what they needed. Something in the city needed to work as it had before the collapse.

For days I couldn’t get the tiny fragment of information out of my head. A postmaster hero, a tiny detail in one of the most dramatic episodes of the twentieth century. There was a story here, and the writer inside me knew it.

How the story grew into Nora and Quinn’s romance is, well, something I dare not analyze. I don’t like to think too much about how such things take form. I just sit down at my desk and let it unfurl through my fingers. If that makes it sound effortless–that’s nowhere near the case–but it does capture some of the wonder that keeps me going. And when I get to share it, I’m a giddy, grinning idiot, holding it out for the world like a child holding up a crayon drawing yelping “look what I made!”

Some days that’s a wonderful thing, and you get a review like this one: “Rich in history, faith and intrigue, Mission of Hope, written by Allie Pleiter, is one of the most beautifully written romances I’ve read in a very long while” from TheSeasonforRomance.com.

Other days, well, let’s just say that’s why I think God made chocolate.

BACK COVER COPY:

No one knows who he is or where he’s from. But witnesses throughout San Francisco report a masked man in black is bringing supplies–and badly needed hope–to homeless earthquake survivors. Some believe that the city’s gallant rescuer is a gentleman of wealth. But others whisper that he is a working class man with courage as great as his faith. And rumor has it that one of the city’s most spirited society belles is helping him against her family’s wishes. What can be confirmed is that the masked messenger will need more than a miracle to escape those on his trail–and win the woman risking everything to save him…

EXCERPT:

She looked right into his eyes, and Quinn felt his stomach drop out through what was left of the soles of his shoes. “You’ll probably think it’s silly, but you’ve been such an encouragement to me. Here I was thinking God had left me alone, and you do all those things—those little but very big things—that let me know He’s still minding my path. You’re an answer to my prayers, Quinn Freeman. How does that make you feel?”

He knew the exact moment his heart left his body. The exact instant it disobeyed all the good and solid reasons he had for not pining over Nora Longstreet and left to follow her of its own accord. He stared at her, knowing his affections had just overstepped all kinds of bounds and not caring. He no longer had any choice in the matter. “I’m thinking it might not be wise to answer that, Miss Longstreet.”

AUTHOR BIO:

An avid knitter, coffee junkie, and devoted chocoholic, Allie Pleiter writes both fiction and non-fiction. The enthusiastic but slightly untidy mother of two, Allie spends her days writing books, buying yarn, and finding new ways to avoid housework. Allie hails from Connecticut, moved to the midwest to attend Northwestern University, and currently lives outside Chicago, Illinois. The “dare from a friend” to begin writing has produced two parenting books, twelve novels, and various national speaking engagements on faith, women’s issues, and writing. Visit her website at www.alliepleiter.com or her knitting blog at www.DestiKNITions.blogspot.com