Breakwall

by Laura Hetzel

Avalon Harbor is a quiet lakeside town where everybody has known everyone else for generations. Shayna Lynburgh has spent the summer before her first year of college watching her mother succumb to cancer and working toward her dream of becoming a journalist. Lonely and bored, she longs for a distraction. Val Alston is a nationally renowned poet. As the new visiting college professor, he moves into town with his marriage on the verge of collapse and a blossoming addiction to alcohol. When Val and Shayna cross paths, they begin an obsessive affair that has the entire town watching and talking. As Shayna gradually becomes aware of Val’s inner demons, she is faced with making difficult decisions about her own role in Val’s alcohol abuse and his professional collapse. The consequences of the choices she makes sets into motion a chain reaction of events that will shake the small town she’s known all her life to its core.

306 pages, Paperback

First published July 29, 2014

About the author

Laura Hetzel’s debut novel, Its Own Defense, was published in April, 2013, and has been the subject of newspaper articles in both the Washington/Ozaukee County Daily News and The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Hetzel has been published in various literary magazines and has won academic and editorial awards. Hetzel has led seminars on writing and poetry for the Kettle Moraine Writers’ Conference and appeared on their Writers’ Panel. Hetzel currently resides in southeast Wisconsin. She is the author of the Berlin Evers Series: Its Own Defense, Ripples and What the Darkness Fears. Other novels include Breakwall, Neon Neverland, and Wisteria, a southern gothic novel of voodoo and haunted manors in the deep south. Her newest book, Persona, is a collection of her award-winning poetry and short stories.

Reviews

[Iekika Burrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Second read of Laura's. I found myself picturing characters & places. I enjoyed it.