Saturday 11 March 2017

Review: A Bridge Across the Ocean by Susan Meissner


Wartime intrigue spans the lives of three women past and present in the latest novel from the acclaimed author of Secrets of a Charmed Life .

February, 1946. World War Two is over, but the recovery from the most intimate of its horrors has only just begun for Annaliese Lange, a German ballerina desperate to escape her past, and Simone Deveraux, the wronged daughter of a French Resistance spy.

Now the two women are joining hundreds of other European war brides aboard the renowned RMS Queen Mary to cross the Atlantic and be reunited with their American husbands. Their new lives in the United States brightly beckon until their tightly-held secrets are laid bare in their shared stateroom. When the voyage ends at New York Harbor, only one of them will disembark...

Present day. Facing a crossroads in her own life, Brette Caslake visits the famously haunted Queen Mary at the request of an old friend. What she finds will set her on a course to solve a seventy-year-old tragedy that will draw her into the heartaches and triumphs of the courageous war brides and will ultimately lead her to reconsider what she has to sacrifice to achieve her own deepest longings.

Paperback, 384 pages
Expected publication: March 14th 2017 by Berkley Books

Terri's Thoughts

I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.  Thank you!  The expected publication date is March 14th, 2017.

This story had a lot of the things I look for in a good book; a war story, historical fiction, and compelling stories that you want to unravel.  Check!  What I did not expect was that there would literally be a ghost story.  Normally I find that when a story takes this angle it can go one of two ways....very well or terribly wrong with no middle ground.  Fortunately for this story it worked.

As tends to be the case, I was more wrapped up in the stories of Annaliese and Simone in the past than I was with Brette's story in the present.  This was ok with me as I find that many times the present day story only serves as the link to the past and not necessarily the focal point.

I will not re-hash the plot as I feel the synopsis does a good job of describing the story.  I will only say that I was very pleased with this story and fans of historical fiction and stories (loosely) around wartime should enjoy this.  If you feel a little worried because of the ghost aspect, don't, it is minor in the grand scheme of the story.  Just pick it up and enjoy



About the Author


Susan Meissner was born in San Diego, California, the second of three. She spent her childhood in just two houses.
Her first writings are a laughable collection of oddly worded poems and predictable stories she wrote when she was eight.

She attended Point Loma College in San Diego, and married her husband, Bob, who is now an associate pastor and a chaplain in the Air Force Reserves, in 1980. When she is not working on a new novel, she is directing the small groups ministries at The Church at Rancho Bernardo. She also enjoy teaching workshops on writing and dream-following, spending time with my family, music, reading great books, and traveling.


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