About the Book
Steal away for a quiet hour or two to Somergate, a 1920’s-era estate on the eastern coast of Vancouver Island, where mossy stone walls keep quiet company with winding pathways, where sun pennies dance on salty waters, and where long-forgotten stories lie waiting to be discovered.
On the brink of happy retirement after more than three decades of teaching, Sarah Marshall is living at Somergate and is ready to embrace all that this next chapter of life will bring. Tucked beneath her excitement though, is a nagging uncertainty: will retirement bring the same sense of fulfillment that she found in her work? Will her finances hold up under the strain of the ever-mounting costs of maintaining the old estate? And will she ever again find a love like the one that was lost to her years ago?
Filled with warmth and a quiet humor, Somergate is a story that emphasizes the importance of family and of faith, speaks of the healing that can come after heart-wrenching loss, and gently directs the reader’s attention to the presence of a loving Creator.
Book Excerpt
Hours later, Maddie lay, exhausted but sleepless, in the immense bed that she had shared with her husband for more than four decades. Her thoughts drifted back over the day and turned once again to the swans. She, too, had seen them fly over Charles’ grave, and she had known, immediately, that it was no coincidence. The sun breaking through the clouds, the swans flying overhead illuminated to a glorious creamy white against the dark blue-black sky… The exquisite beauty of that moment was much more than mere chance. It had been a gift, and somehow, a promise. She had felt Charles’ presence there at the graveside as surely as if he had been standing next to her. He had been right there, and she had felt his love embracing her, supporting her. How fitting that the swans should put in an appearance on the day that marked the beginning of her own personal winter. She and Charles had shared a memorable, precious summer and autumn together. Now, in winter, she would journey on alone.
The fact that there had been forty-one swans at Charles’ grave today was merely a quiet confirmation of what she had felt there, of what she already knew. Charles wasn’t lost to her. He had only stepped through an unseen curtain into another place a bit ahead of her. Maddie remembered how sometimes at parties Charles would make his way from group to group, talking, laughing, occasionally looking up and catching Maddie’s eye across the room. Then he would smile or wink and Maddie would know that his thoughts were still with her. Separated temporarily, but together still. Today at his grave, she had caught his old familiar smile, as though across a crowded room. Somehow, across the great canyon of death, Charles had caught her eye and sent her a message. Together still. Maddie drifted at last into an exhausted slumber, and as she did one thought held her in its comforting embrace: Charles was waiting for her, loving her still, and someday, sometime, she would step through the curtain too, and join him.
About the Author
L. L. MacLellan is the author of the recently published inspirational romance novel “Somergate: The Scent of Autumn Roses.” She won her first literary award, a shiny blue ribbon, for a short story entered in a three-state regional writing contest back in the sixth grade, and has been writing ever since. Lori lives on Vancouver Island in British Columbia with her Mountie husband and their four beautiful daughters, where she cares for her mother and spends any free time gardening, antiquing, and of course, writing.
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