Giveaway Guest Post The Angel Connection by Judith Anne Barton @jabartonbooks

About the Book

Sweeping, Epic Love Story Intertwines Two Women in Two Worlds

The Angel Connection tells the mystical tale of two women born a century apart, but whose destinies are mysteriously linked by long held secrets. In the vein of The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Outlander, this compelling novel straddles historical and contemporary fiction. The Angel Connection is a timeless love story told by two female protagonists who transcend the boundaries of time and space and are hurtled toward their inevitable collision.

In 1996, newly divorced TV journalist Morgan Reed finds herself at a personal and professional low, and escapes to pastoral Bucks County. There she discovers her new home is birthplace to the Pennsylvania Impressionist movement. Morgan impulsively buys an old haunted church rectory and is drawn into creating a documentary about the local painters of that era. She also gets pulled into an unsettling love affair with her fellow filmmaker, which raises the ire of her adult son. In 1895, in the same Bucks County Church Rectory, Evangeline Laury, the beautiful and restless wife of a zealot preacher is torn between her role as obedient wife and her birth as a talented painter in the hands of a charismatic local Impressionist who soon becomes her lover and soul mate. Evangeline struggles with her duties, but the desire for her lover and her art come at a cost, and an unspeakable tragedy makes her a virtual prisoner of the rectory. Bound together as they try to martial universal forces beyond their control, Morgan in 1996 and Evangeline in 1895 both struggle to fulfill their needs for creative expression, true love and familial duty. As Morgan uncovers the drama that unfolded in the old house 100 years earlier, the two women’s pasts meld into the present, igniting karmic embers and bringing a shuddering retribution. Where does one story end and the other begin?

On Writing The Angel Connection

“Disillusioned by my own recent divorce, yet still a romantic at heart, I was inspired to write the perfect love story-one that I would fall into as a reader. Like my modern day protagonist Morgan, I had just relocated -- escaped is more like it! -- to a quaint historic village in Bucks County Pennsylvania. The achingly beautiful countryside, coupled with the spirits of artists who had flocked there for centuries seeking a muse, set the stage for a compelling, timeless, mystical love story. My immersion in yoga and eastern spiritualism sparked the idea for parallel universes: two creative women, born a century apart, living in the same house, unable to reconcile their artistic passion with the obligations of family and the longing for true love. The intriguing prospect of re-incarnation was in place.” – Judith Anne Barton

About the Author

Judith Anne Barton is an author, actress, playwright and award-winning television journalist. The Angel Connection is her first novel. After a successful career in broadcast journalism in Philadelphia that spanned over a decade, Barton moved to Bucks County, PA where she worked with her mentor, the late JP Miller, author of the classic The Days of Wine and Roses. Her first play Opening Night received its world premiere at Philadelphia’s Lantern Theatre Company, and was named a finalist in the Sundance Film Lab competition. She is the co-author of The Best Letter Book Ever (book and CD-ROM), and is also a published poet. Barton now resides in Los Angeles where she also pursues an acting career in film and television. Her sons, William Wheeler (The Reluctant Fundamentalist) and Thomas Wheeler (Puss in Boots, Puss in Boots II) are successful screenwriters.

http://judithannebarton.blogspot.com/

Blue Heron Press              
Paperback: $13.93

394 pages, softcover

ISBN: 978-0615687421

June 2013

Available from Amazon.

Genres: Fiction, Romance, Women’s Fiction, Historical Fiction, Paranormal, Mystical

PLEASE WELCOME JUDITH TO BOOKHOUNDS

In 1996, newly divorced TV journalist Morgan Reed finds herself at a personal and professional low, and escapes to pastoral Bucks County. There she discovers her new home is birthplace to the Pennsylvania Impressionist movement. Morgan impulsively buys an old haunted church rectory and is drawn into creating a documentary about the local painters of that era. She also gets pulled into an unsettling love affair with her fellow filmmaker, which raises the ire of her adult son. In 1895, in the same Bucks County Church Rectory, Evangeline Laury, the beautiful and restless wife of a zealot preacher is torn between her role as obedient wife and her birth as a talented painter in the hands of a charismatic local Impressionist who soon becomes her lover and soul mate. Evangeline struggles with her duties, but the desire for her lover and her art come at a cost, and an unspeakable tragedy makes her a virtual prisoner of the rectory. Bound together as they try to martial universal forces beyond their control, Morgan in 1996 and Evangeline in 1895 both struggle to fulfill their needs for creative expression, true love and familial duty. As Morgan uncovers the drama that unfolded in the old house 100 years earlier, the two women’s pasts meld into the present, igniting karmic embers and bringing a shuddering retribution. Where does one story end and the other begin?

Judi shares her love for Bucks County, Pennyslyvania and the real karmic miracles that take place there.

The Miracle of Earrings

For centuries, artists, writers, performers and poets have been drawn to the quaint pocket villages that nestle close to the mighty Delaware River. There’s a muse hovering over the swaying, shurrusshing trees, the weeping granite cliff rocks, the rushing creeks and hidden valleys of Bucks County Pennsylvania.

Some mystical force imbues each curve of a country road with the hold- your-breath possibility of a miracle just around the next bend.

I know about these miracles because I have been graced and gratified by them -- not once, but many times.

The greatest miracle of my time in this timeless place was the birth of my novel The Angel Connection. A long labor it was -- 17 years of writing, rewriting, fitting the parts together like a Rubiks cube, yet in some ways the book was channeled through me during miles and miles of walks to the river and back when the characters told me their stories. As I swam day after day, lap after lap, the emotion of the story enveloped me as completely as the crisp blue water I glided through. Gradually it told its deepest secrets to me. Often in deep meditation, fighting a vexing writer’s block, the velvety black quiet behind my eyes would suddenly open like a curtain revealing the solution I needed. Occasionally during my outdoors meditation, so deep and steady was the quiet, a tiny wild bird -- a wren or a sparrow --would gently set down on my knee, watching me in companionable silence. That too was a small smile of a miracle.

But I’m going to tell you of a medium sized miracle that happened to me.

One day I opened a drawer of my antique breakfront, and stared at a dismaying jumble of mangled sterling silver flatware in the pattern chosen for me at birth, Gorham Chantilly. Over the years these meant-to-last-forever dinner forks, salad forks, knives and spoons had been alarmingly and noisily masticated and expelled from a series of garbage disposals. Guilt and sentimentality had me packing and hauling the sad metallic tangle of long ago bridal dreams with every move, then settling them in a drawer and forgetting about them.

On this particular day, though, I looked at the silver and had an epiphany. I thought of a local jewelry maker whose work I admired. Occasionally our mats had been side by side in yoga class. I found her number in the phone book and called to offer her my silver. Though initially taken aback, she soon believed me when I said I was donating the silver to her. It was my act of Karma Yoga, which means doing good without expecting anything in return. So she arrived at my house and I handed over the silver. She thanked me profusely and said she would craft something wonderful for me from the treasure. So much for Karma Yoga!

The jewelry maker kept her promise. Some months later (by sheer coincidence it was my birthday!) she approached me at yoga and handed me a tiny box holding a silver necklace and the most exquisitely crafted earrings: amethyst, crystal, citrine quartz, and finely smithed florets of my own silver. I was thrilled.

I immediately laced the earrings through my lobes and admired their sparkle and swing in the rear view mirror on the drive home. Later that day I visited a friend to show off my new earrings. We walked to the river and back. As I was leaving her house she noticed that I was only wearing one earring! We shook out my clothes, searched upstairs and downstairs, in my car. I retraced my steps, nose to the ground, as far as the village a few hundred yards away. I felt sick. This was during one of my many “financially challenged” periods. I could barely pay the mortgage, let alone treat myself to pretty new things. To lose one of these beautiful new earrings on the very day that I got them -- my birthday, for Pete’s sake! -- seemed a cruel irony.

I brooded about the loss for two or three days, just feeling sorry for myself.

On the third day, I was driving south on River Road toward home. As I approached the village of Lumberville, I slowed down to make the familiar right turn onto Fleecydale Road, the road I’d walked with my friend on the day I lost the earring. As I began the two mile drive toward the village, I said aloud, “I’m going to look for a blinding shard of sunlight glinting off an object on the side of the road. It will be my earring.” In a span of 20 seconds, I saw ahead of me on the left side of the road, a brilliant finger of light shooting downward through the trees, pointing to a glittering, incandescent spot on the ground.

I slowed to a stop. From the driver’s seat I could see my illuminated earring resting on a circle of loose gravel.

I got out and bent over to pick it up.

It was pristine.

Great miracles, medium-sized miracles, tiny miracles. I’ve been electrified by all manner of synchronistic happenings in the magical mystical region that is Bucks County PA. I am always amazed but never surprised.

About the Author

Judith Anne Barton is an author, actress, playwright and award-winning television journalist. The Angel Connection is her first novel. After a successful career in broadcast journalism in Philadelphia that spanned over a decade, Barton moved to Bucks County, PA where she worked with her mentor, the late JP Miller, author of the classic The Days of Wine and Roses. Her first play Opening Night received its world premiere at Philadelphia’s Lantern Theatre Company, and was named a finalist in the Sundance Film Lab competition. She is the co-author of The Best Letter Book and is also a published poet. Barton now resides in Los Angeles where she also pursues an acting career in film and television. Her sons, William Wheeler (The Reluctant Fundamentalist) and Thomas Wheeler (Puss in Boots, Puss in Boots II) are successful screenwriters.

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