FULL SYNOPSIS FOR LIVING IN A SHADOW
Why do agents/publishers want the full synopsis, including ending? Here goes:
SYNOPSIS FOR LIVING IN A SHADOW
Marcy Jennings, 32-year old, award-winning Foreign Correspondent for The New York Times has been all around the world. She loves her job and her nomad ways, even when some of her writing assignments put her in dangerous locations. She also loves her husband, parents, and the quiet refuge of her hometown, Herndon, Virginia.
When Marcy returns to Herndon to spend time with her family, accepting a permanent position for the local newspaper, her life is turned upside-down when her husband, Richard Crawford, abruptly moves out of the condo where they have lived for ten years. Marcy is left hurt and confused. Ultimately, she has to face the first shadow in her life that has been unresolved since college—a miscarriage which she told her fiancée, Rich, was an abortion. (Revealed much later in the novel and demonstrating how a little white lie can corrode a relationship and stop meaningful communication, even when love has found two soul-mates.)
Determined to face her problems head-on, Marcy moves forward with her life, even though she still feels in limbo. Through a human-interest story for the Style Section of The Herndon Chronicle, Marcy meets a younger man, Chuck Linsford, an established horse-breeder from Middleburg, Virginia, who inherited the horse farm from his Great Uncle. Marcy is impressed with Chuck as a true survivor and hero of the foster care system where he grew up. When they begin a consensual relationship, Marcy is swept up in the experience of steamy sex and the idyllic beauty of the Virginia countryside.
Little does she know that 22-year old Chuck is a skilled sociopath and a master at combining date-rape drugs into a sex-slave cocktail: Rohypnol (“The Forget Pill”), Ecstasy (a sexual enhancer), and Ketamine (a horse tranquilizer and hallucinogenic). Under the façade of an adoring lover, he makes her forget just completely enough—makes her sexual urges just strong enough—and tutors her in a paralyzed, altered state just long enough—for Marcy to become a sexual submissive, completely dominated and controlled, losing her grasp on reality, her self-worth, and self-esteem.
Other supporting characters in this erotic, romantic, psychological suspense are facing their own shadows, dealing with relationships in our fast-paced modern society, where secrets can be hidden and past transgressions are often misrepresented.
The cliché, “All’s well that ends well,” is not always the case. The neurological, physiological, and emotional side effects of date-rape drugs linger long after the drugs are out of the blood stream. Marcy must now face this second set of deep, dark shadows.
Marcy finds out her lover’s dirty secrets from Chuck’s elderly housekeeper. When she suffers a second miscarriage (Chuck’s baby), the physical and mental side effects of the drugs cause Marcy to almost bleed to death and suffer a complete mental breakdown.
Her husband reaches out to her from afar to prove that love and understanding can start the healing journey, physically and emotionally. The Epilogue reaches into the future as Marcy and Rich finally have the baby girl they have both wanted for so long, but were afraid to talk about. The shadows of sexual abuse still surface, but they face those nightmares together. There is hope!