"THE WAY HOME just may be my favourite book of this year."
Reviewed by Annie Tegelan
Posted November 3, 2013
Romance Suspense
Cindy Gerard has always been one of the top notch Romantic
Suspense authors in the business. But what she does in this
special tie-in to the Black Ops Inc. and the One-Eyed Jacks
series is so unique and exciting that it blows all other
books out of the park. THE WAY HOME features two couples who
have been impacted by the war in Afghanistan.
Jess Albert lost her husband, Jeff four years ago to the
war. Since then, she has been living her life in solitude.
However, when former military hero Tyler Brown returns in
her life, she is reminded of the exciting passion they
shared the last time he was with her. As they undergo a
sweet and cautious journey into love, Jess recovers from the
loss she had and learns the beauty of discovering passion
again.
Meanwhile, a shocking discovery is made when Jeff turns out
to be alive. He suffers from retrograde amnesia and cannot
remember his past, let alone that he has a wife waiting for
him at home. He has been staying with an Afghani woman who
is helping him heal and hide him from the Taliban. In this
time, their own romance blooms, creating a wonderful story
of love in the midst of a war.
Vastly different from what we've seen so far from Gerard,
her writing truly shines in this outstanding novel. You can
expect raw emotion, heartwarming moments and two romances
that will melt your hearts. THE WAY HOME just may be my
favourite book of this year.
SUMMARY
Four years ago Jess Albert got the news that her husband
Jeff was killed in action in Afghanistan, and a painful void
entered her life. The more time passed, the more acutely she
felt that emptiness. But when Tyler Brown, former military
hero and all-around alpha male, shows up a year after she'd
last seen him, Jess gradually begins to realize there is one
thing that can make her feel whole again--love. As they're planning their wedding and new life together,
Jess receives shocking news: her husband is alive, under the
care of a young Afghani woman hiding him from the Taliban.
Even as he sees their happily-ever-after slip away, Ty
arranges for the One Eyed Jacks and Black Ops, Inc. teams to
make a daring and dangerous rescue mission to bring Jeff
home. The hardest thing Ty or Jess has ever done is to let
the other go. When Jeff returns to Jess, broken physically and emotionally
and with no memory of their history, they try to heal their
marriage and each other. But as time brings them together
more as friends than lovers, an unexpected development helps
them see the true way home, to the people they love.
ExcerptPROLOGUEAfghanistan July It wasn't the memory he would have chosen — not when he
couldn't even remember his own name — but he knew that he
used to have nightmares about vampires. Hiding under his
bed and in dark closets. Swooping down on their Dracula
wings, sinking their fangs into his neck and sucking out his
blood. How ironic, then, that he'd become a vampire of sorts: a
creature who lived in the night, hid from the light, and
sucked sustenance as though it were blood from a young
Afghani woman who despised him but wouldn't let him die.
She brought him food, water and medicine. And opiates that
she liberally laced in all three. He watched her now through an opiate induced haze,
physically incapacitated and totally dependent on her. He
knew that her name was Rabia and that she could ill afford
the things she brought for him. He also knew that if he were
caught while she harbored the escaped American soldier a
horde of Taliban warlords were searching for, not only would
he be tortured, interrogated and finally executed, so would
she. So he didn't know why she continued to help him, but he had
no option but to accept it. Just as he had no choice but to
believe what she'd told him in heavily accented English
about who he was … because he didn't remember. He didn't
remember being an American soldier, or what had happened to
him, or how he'd escaped from the Taliban and ended up here. The panic and anguish that stalked him whenever the opiates
wore off were as huge and dark as the cave where she hid
him. So he gladly relinquished both to the apathy induced by
the poppy. Apathy was painless. Apathy made it tolerable to
know that weeks, maybe months of his life were gone. His
memories … gone.
Only the vampire dreams remained of who he'd been. And only
the woman kept him alive. He studied her now as she prepared his meal in the dim light
of an oil lamp, in a silence that embodied their uneasy and
unnatural bond as shifting shadows danced along the curved
rock wall and dust swept into the cave on a wind that never
quit blowing. He knew scattered words in Pashtu but didn't
know why he knew them. She had a passing command of English
but rarely chose to use it. More irony that she represented
the one constant in a life that had been reduced to pain,
fear and the vertigo that crippled him even more than the
opiates. And he didn't know whether to thank her for
keeping him alive, or hate her. Moving his head slowly to avoid triggering another vertigo
attack, he pulled the ragged blanket around him against the
chill of the cave floor. Because he was too weak to feed himself, he watched her eyes
as she offered spoonfuls of lukewarm soup. He couldn't see
her features beneath the dark scarf she wore over her head
and wrapped around her neck to cover her face. He could only
see those eyes, onyx black, winter cold and void of any
emotion but weary disdain. It had been the same thing every day for twenty-three days.
He'd used a small pebble to scratch a mark on the rock wall
every day since he'd regained consciousness. She would
appear wearing dark, baggy trousers beneath an encompassing
scarf or burqa that covered her from head to knees
completely hiding her body beneath yards of coarse, draping
cotton. The scent of the summer heat and the scorch of the
sun that she brought with her were reminders that a world
existed outside this cave. A world that wasn't dank and
dark and cold. A world that was hostile and foreign and
where, she assured him, he was not safe. For twenty-three days she had been the only soul he'd seen
and she had yet to look him directly in the eye. He
wouldn't recognize her if he saw her on the street. Not
that he would ever leave here. If the pain and the vertigo
didn't keep him flat on his back, the ankle shackle that
chained him to the rock wall would. And then there was the
poppy. Who knew how deeply he'd been dragged down that
rabbit hole? Some days — the lucid ones, when he couldn't fight the
fear
— he would lie here shivering and wish for death.
When pain
ripped through his head, when the dizziness became so
crippling it reduced him to lying rigidly still, hugging the
rock floor in a desperate and futile attempt to stop the
nausea, that's when despair crushed him. And he would beg
her to let him die. Always, she refused. She continued to risk all to make
certain he stayed alive and he had no idea why.
He knew only that every time she appeared on quiet feet and
condemning silence, he felt both shame and gratitude because
she hadn't forgotten him — the way he'd forgotten
everything
but the need to leave this place that even God had forsaken
and find his way back home. If only he knew where home was.
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