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20 Years in the Making, Kalamazoo Author Releases Nocturnes— an Eternal and Haunting Love Story that Spans Years & Continents

Do you believe in eternal love? Is there an experience available to the human species that might prove that love truly is eternal? What if you lost someone 50 years ago, or even 500 years ago, and your grief was still as fresh as the day it happened? Could the longevity of grief be a clue to the infinite nature of love?

Inspired by true events, Nocturnes by Kalamazoo, Michigan author Terry Stingley is the spellbinding novel of intertwined destinies. A haunting tale of a love that refuses to die.

Isaac Bloom survived the Holocaust and has wandered the world like a kind of ghost for 50 years. Now, while writing his last travel article before retirement, he has stumbled upon something sinister, and disturbingly-familiar that threatens to exhume memories he thought long since buried. The forbidding stranger at the center of this mystery offers Isaac a difficult choice, and one that he has failed at in the past; whether to embrace love or fear. Isaac must follow the stranger down dark labyrinths of time in the hopes of finally answering the question of eternal love.

Stingley’s inspiration for this book, first drafted 20 years ago, came while he was sitting in a dentist office in New Orleans, where he was living at the time. While thumbing through Time and Newsweek Stingley recalls reading a human interest story that changed his life.

The bottom quarter of the page had a brief “human interest” piece that told of the recent uncovering of a mass grave outside of the notorious concentration camp in Auschwitz, Poland. Eight men and women were interred there, and one of the male skeleton’s work shirt was still intact. In the chest pocket a letter was found. It was a love letter to his wife (who was also in the camp, husbands separated from wives). The letter expressed his intense fear that something would happen to her if the Nazis ever discovered how much he loved her…that they would harm or kill her just to spite them. So he kept his love a painful secret and he carried that secret in his pocket, close to his heart.

“As I sat there reading this poignant, and terribly short, reckoning of a love affair, something came over me,” Stingley says. “It felt like this powerful love, which so desperately wanted to survive the horrors of genocide, was punching a hole through time and space right into my own heart.”

Stingley said he went home that afternoon and started to write Nocturnes. And, over the course of the next two months, working 10 hours a day, Stingley admits Nocturnes wrote itself.

“It felt like I was taking dictation from the very Cosmos. And as much as a fiction novel can fill in the blanks of an incredible love story, I feel that the story of Nocturnes has found a kind of proof that love really is eternal. The ending will enthrall you. I hope you read it. And I hope that it will give YOU the comforting proof that love never dies.”

Terry Stingley grew up in New Orleans and from an early age felt connected to the literary energies of the creative soul of the Crescent City. The uniqueness of the city also inspired a passion for travel, which he has indulged with odysseys to 37 countries. From the Andean jungles of Peru to the ancient temples of Cambodia, from soulful studies in India to mystical sojourns through the ruins and castles of Wales, Terry has made adventure a point of emphasis in his life.

“This was one of those rare books that asks if you believe in love and if love is powerful enough to survive time, place and tragedy. This epic tale spans years and continents as it keeps you wondering what is just around the bend.”— Suzanne Titkemeyer – Editor, No Longer Quivering.

Nocturnes (ISBN # 9781460272466)

Book Details:

  • 192 pages
  • Black & White – Paperback
  • 6 x 9 inches

Available as:

  • 978-1-4602-7245-9 Hardcover
  • 978-1-4602-7246-6 Paperback
  • 978-1-4602-7247-3 eBook

Categories:

Keywords:

Vampires, Holocaust, Mystery And Detective, New Orleans, Eternal Love, Wine, Faith

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