Escape Routes - Book Tour and Giveaway

​It’s 1985 and pampered psychotherapist Lauren Olive loses her job, the love of her life to his hairdresser and is forced to move to a backwoods bungalow as a drug couselor in a rural jail.

Escape Routes
by Marsh Rose
Genre: Historical Women’s Fiction

It’s 1985 and psychotherapist Lauren Olive, a pampered Baby Boomer in the California wine country, has never owned a bank account, lived without a man, or seen the dark side of life. But after she loses her job, and then the love of her life abandons her for his hairdresser, she’s forced to move to a decrepit bungalow in the backwoods and accept work as a drug counselor in a rural jail.

At her new job, the inmates view her wide-eyed naivete with hilarity and her hardened coworkers resent her middle-class roots. Worse, the bungalow seems poised to collapse around her. If Lauren is going to survive financially, avoid going back to live with her parents, and regain normality, she’ll need to leave her little-girl ways behind. But success doesn’t come without struggle. Surrounded by her crusty landlord, the jail’s seasoned deputies, skeptical inmates and a new love interest, Lauren must confront challenges she never could have imagined in her comfortable city life.

Escape Routes is a tale of maturity under duress. It speaks to the emerging audience of readers who want stories of growth and accomplishment by strong women in compelling situations. Although it is a work of fiction, it offers a glimpse into rural American criminal justice during the 1980s, a time when addiction treatment for inmates was in its formative years. Its narrative captures genuine lifestyles, concerns, speech, and behavior without demonizing, demeaning, or glamorizing the characters on either side of the bars.

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​CHAPTER 1
Sunday, April 7, 1985:  “He gives you an allowance?  That’s reckless.”   -- My friend Bridget

            I would have never grown up if the love of my life hadn’t left me for his hairdresser.  In fact, there were a lot of things I never would have done: fixed a toilet, slept with a motorcycle racer, been arrested, learned to cook, bought a house or made peace with my parents. 
            I was always puzzled about what to call our relationship.  Today I’d say I was living with my significant other or my domestic partner but we didn’t have those words back then.   “Living with my boyfriend” would have sounded ridiculous given that I was nearly 30 when we met and he was 35.   
            My mom and dad called our arrangement “shacking up” but they said it with a smile.  That was important to me.  While I complained to my friends about my parents’ over-protectiveness, secretly I was never comfortable with a life choice until I knew they approved.  In fact I had been filled with trepidation in my first year with Aaron when I took him back to Philadelphia for Passover to meet them.  Although he was a JFK look-alike and a university professor and a psychologist, I feared they were disappointed in our lifestyle and they’d let it show.  We were, after all, living in sin in San Francisco, that malignant ganglion of sex and drugs.  But they met me at the airport with the usual volley of kisses and cheek-pinches, and at dinner my father accorded Aaron the seat of honor at the head of the Seder table even though Aaron was Irish and bewildered. 
I had been his teaching assistant in graduate school.  We hooked up the day he found me sobbing in the back row of his classroom, distraught over the end of an affair with a musician I swore would be the next Kris Kristofferson.  Aaron had long legs and a boyish grin and thick chestnut hair that fell disarmingly over one green eye, causing him to constantly flip it back in a graceful pas seul of wrist and neck.  He could have had his pick of arm candy among his worshipful students and admiring colleagues but he chose me, a diminutive, frizzy-haired, myopic daughter of Russian immigrants.   Ten years later we had become one of the rare couples in our generation whose relationship had survived the permissiveness and excesses of the recent past: free sex, open marriages, the whole suppurating end result of The Summer of Love. 
            By the early 1980s, Dr. Aaron Prentice was on a tenure track at the university.  I had survived the rigors of getting my psychotherapist’s license – a master’s degree and a lengthy internship – and was seeing clients at Changing Times, a non-profit counseling agency housed in an old Victorian on a side street in town.  I could have sought a more lucrative position in a psychiatric hospital with its endless chaos and demanding bureaucracy but I chose the lesser-paying quiet ambiance of a small local clinic.  My clients’ issues were typical of our middle-class, middle-aged population.  Loss of a parent, a cheating spouse, a wayward teenager.  No violent paranoid schizophrenics, no one thinking they were Mother Mary.  I enjoyed pleasant relationships with my colleagues and never thought about work on weekends. 
            Aaron and I bought an upscale townhouse in Santa Rosa, a city in the famed Sonoma County wine country north of the Golden Gate Bridge.  There, we lived the lives of established DINKs (Dual Income, No Kids) in the pre-Dot.Com era.  Good wine, good but not excessive food and sophisticated, well-read friends.  On Saturday nights his students dropped by for Merlot and Chardonnay, hors d’oeuvres and energetic debates.  Our décor was a meld of flea market chic, exotic gifts from travelers and carefully collected objets d’arte.  The academic tomes and literary classics on our living room bookcase kept company with ancient Native American artifacts and Austrian blown glass.  Our throw rugs were from the Andes. 
            Aaron did the grocery shopping and cooking.  His mother was a noted chef and cookbook author in Carmel and he was taught from an early age to be masterful in the handling of sauces and herbs.  He told me that some of the most vitriolic arguments he’d had with his wife throughout their disastrous brief marriage were about who controlled the kitchen.  In contrast I had segued from my parents’ house to the college dorm, back to my parents, then a mercifully brief span alone during which time I typically ate a full meal only on dates.  The rest of the time it was take-out standing over the kitchen sink.  By the time Aaron came along I was more accustomed to being fed than to feeding.  I was content to let Aaron take the helm at the stove.  Instead I did the laundry, dishes, and quite a bit of dusting.  All those objets d’arte. 
            Aaron with his full-time professor’s salary easily assumed responsibility for our bills.  My slim income went toward the little luxuries we both enjoyed; the best coffee, whale-watching at a bed and breakfast overlooking the sea.  I simply handed my paychecks over to Aaron.  If I needed money for some personal luxury – a hand-embroidered blouse from an artist in North Beach, some highlighting in my hair – Aaron gave back what I needed. 
            Bridget, my best friend and former college roommate, was not among the many who envied me.  “You have nothing in your own name?” she said.  “What if he gets hit by a truck?  And he gives you an allowance?  That’s reckless.” 
            But nothing would go wrong.  I was cherished and secure in the arms of a man everyone adored.  I wanted nothing more in life than to go on appreciating the bounty.   That was until Aaron announced he was leaving me for the beautician who did his hair.

Lies and Love in Alaska
by Marsh Rose
Genre: Women’s Fiction, Romance 

To stop the meddling of her matchmaker friends, divorcee Annalee fakes an affair with an Alaskan bush pilot whose profile she has seen in a magazine about bachelors in that rugged environment. The plan backfires when he appears in her small California town and lures her to his remote cabin with stories about the magnetic pull of the Last Frontier and the promise of lasting love.

In ways she never imagined, she finds herself falling for both the pilot and Alaska in spite of the bears, blizzards, peculiar neighbors, pyromaniac ex-girlfriend, stack of love letters hidden in a pantry and evident truth to what they say about single men in Alaska: the odds are good, but the goods are odd. Before Annalee can sever her ties in California and move north, a shocking telephone call from an unknown woman rocks her world and catapults her into a whole new way of life.


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​CALIFORNIA, 1989

Chapter 1

The Odds Are Good
It was the day after Christmas. Annalee Perkins leaned on her counter and listened to the rain pinging into a galvanized bucket in the next aisle. She dreaded the coming hours. Only Valentine’s Day was as demoralizing as the holiday season at Home And Garden Land. Around her, fellow H.A.G.L. workers drifted in, hung their sodden rain gear and began to prepare for the long day ahead.
The intercom roared to life. Feedback sliced along the cinder block walls, then Annalee heard the voice of her boss Marvin. “Stupefied,” he thundered. “Five letters, sixty-three down, third letter Z.” Marvin began each day with the morning paper’s crossword and he seldom finished it alone. There was a moment of silence, then a reply boomed from the bookkeeper’s microphone.
“Dazed.”
Annalee sighed.  Her knees ached and she felt older than her 40 years. Reluctantly she shifted her gaze to the window. Outside in the rain, ten women had formed a line at the door. Their clothing, from muddy blue jeans to elegant pants suits, represented the wide range of incomes in the rural northern California wine country. But their faces wore nearly identical expressions of dismay. Each woman carried an object—a bathroom scale, a hose attachment or a set of crescent wrenches, some with festive wrapping paper still attached. When H.A.G.L.’s hangar-like doors opened, they would stride to Annalee’s counter and imply that she, maven of the complaints department, was somehow to blame because their husbands or lovers had shopped for Christmas gifts at the hardware store when they should have been at the jeweler’s. Then Annalee would spend the day issuing return receipts, doling out refunds, pleading for stock boys and occasionally reassuring a crestfallen customer that the customer was indeed worth more, so much more than this offensive dashboard cover and matching automotive cup holder and trash receptacle.
“Men,” Annalee murmured. “They can not accomplish even the most simple requirement of love. A gift.” She congratulated herself. Never again would she find a brightly-wrapped garbage disposal brush under the tree. And while she would pass Valentine’s Day alone, she would not open another box with a bow to find a selection of AA, AAA and D batteries.
She reached for a shop broom and turned to her immediate chore, sweeping up the evidence of mice. H.A.G.L. was damp and drafty to the loyal but long-suffering staff, but for all other species its accommodations were a luxury relative to wintering in the muddy field outside. So with the freezing December rains came a parade of insects, amphibians, birds, bats and rodents to join the swarms of customers.
Someone called her name. She looked up to see her friend Ivy, The Duchess Of Kitchenware, with her faux tiara anchored in her hair by a rubber band under her chin.  "Got something for you," she called.  "Meet me in the staff lounge for lunch."  She waved what appeared to be a magazine. Knowing Ivy, it would be something in the realm of dating, being single, or women her age finding love. Or at least sex. 
Annalee sighed again. 
* * *
In the H.A.G.L. staff lounge Annalee and Ivy unpacked their lunches. Tuna sandwich and tea for Annalee, Diet Pepsi in Ivy’s lunch cooler along with a jumbo package of potato chips.
“Have some chips,” Ivy offered. “You know, it’s too bad they didn’t leave the showers when H.A.G.L. took over the building from Greyhound.” She gestured at the wall where shower stall dividers had stood. “If the bus drivers could clean up in here, why couldn’t we? Hose a layer of that H.A.G.L. dust down the drain and be dewy fresh for the afternoon rush. Should there ever be an afternoon rush.”
“Showers would be good as long as we don’t get our hair wet. I think Marvin bought that last lot of hair dryers from gnomes on an island where they don’t have electricity. Anyway, let’s get it over with. What’s this important article you brought for me?”
Ivy fished in her purse and withdrew the slick publication she had brandished that morning. “It’s not just an article, Annalee.  It’s a whole magazine. I think you’ll like it.”
“And that’s why your eyes are squeezed up like when you’re talking about your next round of gum surgery. Hand it over.”
Annalee took the magazine and glanced at its cover.  She saw an auburn-haired man smiling into the distance. He wore a red ski parka with its hood encircled by a ruff of white fur trim and his arms were around the neck of a white dog with strange blue eyes. Behind them was a sled and in the background a white mountain range. Annalee fanned the pages. She saw nothing but photographs of individual men over sparse paragraphs of print. Puzzled, she returned to the cover and then laughed. “Alaskan Bachelors! What is this, a mail order groom catalogue for Eskimos?”
“Nothing like that,” her friend said soberly. “It’s the biggest thing in the singles scene, way better than personal ads in the paper. It’s on all the talk shows and in all the bookstores, Annalee.  All the men in there are single. They live in Alaska where there aren’t any women, or hardly any, and you can meet them through the magazine.  And it’s perfectly safe. The people in the magazine interview them to make sure they’re not weird.”
“You’ve been reading this yourself, haven’t you? I can just hear Mike. ‘Sure, Ivy, what the hell. We’ve been married ten years, good a time as any to bring some fresh blood into the scene. I’ll just mosey on down to the bus depot and pick up our Alaskan bachelor and his sled dogs while you put the moose in the oven.’ Oh, look, someone’s been kissing this picture. I see lipstick and it’s your shade!”
“Annalee, come on.  It’s been five years.  Your husband and that slut he ran off with have had two kids already and you’re still hiding from relationships. Everything you wear is black or brown. No makeup, no accessories, no jewelry other than your wedding rings that look like a row of klieg lights. You’re like a Civil War widow.  Do you know what some people call you?”
Annalee grimaced. “‘The Widder Perkins.’”
“Right. So take off the goddamned rings, put on a red dress and let a nice man get close to you. It’s bad enough you moved back to your childhood home when Brad dumped you. Leave the past. Go forward, Annalee. It’s 1990 next week, a whole new decade!”
“Ivy, please.  You know my parents need me to watch the house while they're away, and the singles scene for women my age is just foolishness, fantasy and sometimes danger. Do you know of any available man our age who isn’t alcoholic, crazy or secretly married?” Annalee reached for the pepper mill and vigorously ground it over her sandwich. “Here in San Amaro a new lover’s moves in bed would be common knowledge because his most recent ex would have confided to the checkout clerk at Vera’s Market. And outside the circled wagons of San Amaro? It’s not just a jungle out there. It’s another planet. Remember Marilyn’s so-called boyfriend Geoffrey?”
“That was an exception, Annalee.”
“Marilyn finding out two weeks after they got together that Geoffrey was born Gloria and had placed third in the women’s open golf tournament at Chula Vista? Not all that exceptional, Ivy. And Lorene’s boyfriend from Los Angeles?”
“Get out! He used to be a woman?”
“No, but she told me he asked to wear the peach lace thongs he’d spied in her underwear drawer. And what about Francine? Gives up six generations of Roman Catholicism, joins a singles vision quest and all she gets is hepatitis from drinking bad river water.”
“You’re just focusing on the negative. And besides, all those women were losers. Look at you, with those long legs and red hair. You can get any man you want.”
“Thanks but even if it were true there’s too much technology. Everywhere you look it’s breast implants, lip plumping, thigh reduction.  I don’t need the competition.  The whole thing  just leads to misery. There’s no one out there for me. I mean, what are the odds of me finding a good man?”
“The odds are good, Annalee. But you’ll never know if you don’t try.” Ivy met her friend’s eyes and held them while she reached down to slide Alaskan Bachelors closer to Annalee’s side of the table.
Annalee rolled her eyes and shoved the magazine into her purse. “Let’s get back to work, Ivy. There are blenders to blend, gaskets to gask and H.A.G.L. workers to sell them.”
* * *
That night Annalee gazed at her bedroom ceiling in the dark. A quarter moon had plied its course across her window and now only its silver light cast a dim glow in the room where she had slept as a teenager—sometimes waking with thoughts similar to those she now tried to still. Relationships. Long ago it was her desire for romance and now it was her desire to avoid it but many of its chores and puzzles were oddly similar. What to give up, what to withhold.
Ivy and her schemes. The most recent wasn’t the worst but it was bad enough. She had convinced an old classmate to come from San Diego under the pretext of attending their high school reunion. “Just let me introduce you to Henry, Annalee,” Ivy had pleaded. “He could play any musical instrument in the high school band just by looking at it. ‘Henry The Great,’ the band leader used to call him.”
Henry the Great had whined about Ivy’s cooking, barely glanced at Annalee, and left two days early. Annalee alone was pleased with his early departure. Possibly some internal medical problem, she theorized. He seemed sanitary enough but his fishy-smelling breath could stop traffic. And Ivy’s third cousin Barry, the engineer from Seattle. Annalee finally conceded to a phone conversation. On the predetermined night, Barry phoned and spent an hour alternately vilifying and glorifying his ex-wife. And Annalee couldn’t imagine being intimate with a man whose hobby was exotic snakes. His description of his atrium with its climate-controlled haven for pit vipers made her imagine something cold slithering up her leg. There were too many women her age out there competing for men, left single by the devastation and permission of the 1960s and 1970s. No relationships forged in her generation seemed to last, and she was disheartened by the pathos of personal ads, singles bars, and her persistent matrimonial agents.
Annalee shifted again in bed. Her shoulders were suddenly chill and she pulled the covers higher. For five years her mother and Ivy and their friends had initiated a parade through her life of single, middle-aged sons, nephews, cousins, neighbors, all divorced and desperate, or gay and in the closet, or separated and angry, or not available because of another woman or a secret vice or in one case a 50 year old man who had never had a girlfriend, lived in his parents’ basement and collected teddy bears. And that ridiculous “male-order” magazine from Alaska, now bundled up with the discarded newspapers and circulars in the recycling bin in the garage.
Annalee’s thoughts rolled to a halt and she drummed her fingers on the sheets. What if, she thought, she could stop this incessant meddling in her life with one well-placed demonstration of its futility. Just a harmless prank. Those men in Alaska... they were all desperate up there.  Surely one would respond to an overture from a middle-aged hardware store employee.  She could write to one of those men.  Lying there in the dark, Annalee played with the idea.  She would never have to meet him in person, just leak the intrigue to her social world. Her long-distance liaison would temporarily be all things to people who loved her. Her parents would believe she had found someone.  Ivy would be thrilled to hear his fascinating letters read aloud in the staff lunchroom, the drama of the Last Frontier, bears, violent weather, long eerie nights.  The town would cease gossiping about her pathetic solitude. And soon, the denouement.  Perhaps with help from a discreet private investigator, her Alaskan bachelor would be exposed as married, psychotic, addicted to alcohol or heroin or sex, emotionally married to his mother, a felon hiding from the law, a deadbeat father hiding from his kids, and/or simply too antisocial to be relationship material. All middle aged men who were out trolling for single women were like that. At their age why else would they be seeking love? Or at least sex. Then her matchmakers would agree that Baby Boomer dating was unrealistic. Ivy would apologize for nagging. Her mother would accept her as she was.  The town would leave her alone.  She would be vindicated.
But no. Annalee sighed and turned over to sleep. Even for a harmless prank the idea was risky. Annalee no longer took risks.
​

​Marsh Rose is a freelance writer, psychotherapist and college educator. Her short stories have appeared in a variety of publications including Cosmopolitan Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Carve Magazine, Hippocampus Magazine, and New Millennium Writings where she took first prize for creative nonfiction in 2018. This is her second novel. She lives in the north San Francisco Bay Area with her greyhound, Adin.

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