The Story Behind Return by Sea by Tracey Jerald

By Tracey Jerald

Emptiness.

Isolation.

Loneliness.

Sometimes such deep feelings can throw a kick hard to the soul. They can keep punching you, and punching you, even amid a room full of people. Sometimes they develop from something as a small as a kernel of darkness or they can surround you with the force of a Category 5 hurricane. They can come out of nowhere or you can pinpoint the exact moment the gloom descends upon you.

And there’s no way to stop it from occurring.

Death affects many people like that. Then again, these same emotions can be evoked by the pain caused by love.

In Return by Sea, MMA champion Nicholas Cain has spent his life on the edge of those emotions. Even with the men he calls his brothers, he’s kept himself at a wary distance, afraid to get too close. But more than with the men, there’s a single woman he persistently sabotages himself with – Maris Smith.

Maris is the last of her family after the death of her beloved brother, Jed. Although adored by her friends, there’s a weariness that’s settling deep inside her soul. All she wants to find is the one thing her brother wanted her to have – happiness.

Two broken souls fed by anger and heartache? You guessed it. It’s time to return to Alaska for the conclusion of the Glacier Adventure Series!

But in addition to being breathtakingly emotional and inspirational, this story is also enemies-to-lovers. Quite literally, Maris disdains Nick despite his celebrity status. Maybe because of it. Also, these two weren’t just apart mentally, but physically.

I definitely had my work cut out for me to help Nick and Maris fall in love. Misunderstandings, time, regret, all swirled together until I felt like I’d been tossed through a storm right along with them.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the idea of writing about a brotherhood of friends was sparked by my time at the Great Alaskan Lumberjack show in Ketchikan, Alaska. But the inspiration for Maris and Nick’s story actually came from some close friends. They taught me about something so life changing, it caused my eyes to open wide and my heart to clench around the emotional toll it takes to go through certain life events. So much so, the book is dedicated to the two of them.

Well, maybe not just the two of them.

I hope the final installment of the Glacier Adventure Series will wreck your soul and have you falling in love all at the same time. It can be read as a complete standalone, but you’re going to want to go back and grab the other stories to complete your understanding about the brotherhood that was started all those years ago.

Trust me. They’re lumberjacks. You need them in your life.

Tracey Jerald is the author of the new book Return by Sea

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