INGLIS, Fla., June 25, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) -- For some the past is simply history; for others it's a kaleidoscope of happy memories. To Kate McKenzie, central character in Seeth Miko Trimpert's new novel Bear Crossing (now available through 1stBooks), the past is tragic, unfinished business. A woman of 47, Kate has lived. She has come through a bad marriage, raised children and survived devastating heartbreak. Now she lives a busy, though emotionally isolated life as the keeper of Bear Crossing, a small inn on the banks of the Withlacoochee River in west central Florida.
In journal format, Kate chronicles six weeks at Bear Crossing - six weeks which will change her life. The story opens in early March with Kate anticipating the arrival of the season's first guests, a group of springtime regulars who, over the years, have become special friends. Kate paints a vivid picture of these opinionated, outspoken, fascinating and well-loved people: Maggie and Lucie, spinsters from Baltimore; Robert Major Nettles and his grandson Charlie; Max and Minnie Half Moon; and the group's latest addition, the Evans family. Readers may watch as Kate unwittingly becomes ever more entangled in the lives of these friends, the troubles of her little neighbor Polly and with Father Michael James Garvey, a Catholic priest and the man who loves her.
As Kate's springtime regulars depart, Bear Crossing welcomes a succession of engaging guests, ranging from Catholic clerics on retreat to a gay couple from Key West. In the mix are campaigning politicos, a wild array of characters attending the wedding of a Cuban American boy from Miami to a Southern Bell from Tallahassee and young honeymooners from Tennessee, all of whom provide a patchwork quilt of life against which Kate tells her own story.
Bear Crossing is a tale of "back country Florida," of people simple yet complex. "It is a tale of love lost and found," says Trimpert, "from beginning to end, a tale of survival."
Trimpert, a registered nurse and freelance technical writer, has been a member of the National League of American Pen Women since 2000. The mother of three grown children and wife of a career military man, she resides in Inglis, Fla., on the Withlacoochee River. Although Bear Crossing is her first published novel, she has written two others since its completion and is currently working on a fourth. She hopes to publish all three soon.
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