Music has the power to heal.
Discovered while busking on the streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, Jessie Wheeler – once a teen runaway from Prince Edward Island - is now a popular singer-songwriter and actor. On the day her boyfriend Charlie proposes, he kicks an estranged friend - actor Josh Sawyer - out of his Club. Jessie sees something of herself reflected in Josh’s sorrowful chocolate brown eyes – a deep loneliness and angst. When a part on Josh’s new television series Drifters becomes available, Jessie can’t resist the temptation, despite the fact that taking the part threatens her engagement to Charlie. When a past nemesis, Deuce McCall, makes a tragic appearance in the city, Jessie’s turbulent past catches up with her, threatening any chance she has at a true and sustainable love.
A Song For Josh is a simple sweet story about hope and love, and the power of music to heal. Through Josh and Jessie’s story we learn that all of us damaged souls are indeed lovable, even when we are quite certain we are not.
Susan is a writer from beautiful Prince Edward Island, Canada. A finalist in the Atlantic Writing Awards, she recently self-published the first three books of the Drifters series (A Song For Josh, Promises, and No Greater Love) and is working on the fourth book, Riptide. Susan is also an avid filmmaker with a feature documentary in post-production and big dreams of producing a feature drama. Frequent visits to Vancouver for great coffee from her singer-songwriter / barista son Christopher are a must, as are summer sunsets on the south shore of P.E.I.
When Jessie's childhood 'ends' at age twelve, so does any real parenting. As a result, her adulthood is imbued with a childlike innocence revealed through hand drawn smiley faces drawn with a Sharpie on yellow plaid sneakers, and through the constant twisting of ringlets in her hair and clothing when she's anxious. I'm not sure where the smiley faces on the sneakers came from - did I do that at one time? Maybe. I do own yellow plaid Converse Chucks! Not that I'm anything like Jessie, but I suppose on some level we do think alike! The ringlet twisting came from my sweet niece Lana (she's just about to turn nine), who has often been spotted with a bunny baby blanket in her arms, a tiny finger twisting the hem around and around. This excerpt features Charles Keating, Jessie's Producer and pseudo-adopted father. In moments when her childlike behaviours are obvious, he finds his mind wandering to the sordid mysteries of Jessie's mysterious past. Twisting ringlets and drawing smiley faces on the toes of sneakers are reminders of what he's missed, and a call to action to pay attention in the future.
Book Excerpt
A Song for Josh
Another ringlet. She adjusted her body weight, and crossed one foot over the other, still on the desk. She’d drawn smiley faces on the toes of her plaid yellow Converse Chucks, and they taunted him from the desk except, from his vantage point, they were distorted, sort of upside down and backwards. He wondered when she’d done that, and why. Jessie often did strange little things that others wouldn’t do, such as mark up a pair of sneakers in a very noticeable grade school way, and it was part of the charm of her, and was also the part of her that kept her separate from others. To him, these things were clues to her past. He wondered whether she’d missed a certain amount of her childhood, or teenage hood - the time when a child would have been scolded for such antics and thus stopped the behavior.
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