Bootleggers Bride [TRADE PAPER ]

Can vengeance wipe away the dark shadows of the past?

Two corpses—one suicide, the other murder—emerge through the Long Lake ice ten years apart yet linked by a St. Louis bootlegger’s killing three decades earlier. Those dramatic events frame twelve-year-old A.J. Nowak’s search for identity after being orphaned by World War II and its long shadow. He struggles to overcome dark family history, his explosive anger, his bootlegger and loan shark father’s D-Day death, and his widowed mother’s desperate self-destruction to safeguard A.J.’s legacy from a blackmailer. Ultimately, A.J. faces a self-defining decision: whether to avenge her death by his own hand."This is a fantastic read about family, love, honor, and treachery that I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend." —Grant Leishman,Reader's Favorite

"…Moving and gripping… A memorable love story… A page-turner, with feeling." —Rosalind Brackenbury, Author ofBecoming George Sand

"…A vivid sense of place, a deft touch with dialogue, and a gift for creating engaging characters. …[H]is best book yet." —Michael Mewshaw, Author ofNot Heaven But Paradise

"Rick Skwiot’s gripping new novel begins…when speakeasies dotted the land…vividly replicat[ing] the life and times." —Terry Baker Mulligan, Author ofSugar Hill: Where The Sun Rose Over Harlem

"Skwiot delivers the grit and beauty of a Midwest gone by, back when life was harder than it is today, but also more honest and…honorable." —Kelly Daniels, Author ofA Candle for San Simón

"Packed with mystery, intrigue, psychological twists and turns, and many different kinds of discovery, The Bootlegger&rsquolC—