Publication Date: April 19, 2022
Kregel Publications

Genre: Historical Fiction/Christian

Charlotte Anne Mattas longs to turn back the clock. Before her husband, Sam, went to serve his country in the war, he was the man everyone could rely on–responsible, intelligent, and loving. But the person who’s come back to their family farm is very different from the protector Annie remembers. Sam’s experience in the Pacific theater has left him broken in ways no one can understand–but that everyone is learning to fear.

Tongues start wagging after Sam nearly kills his own brother. Now when he claims to have seen men on the mountain when no one else has seen them, Annie isn’t the only one questioning his sanity and her safety. If there were criminals haunting the hills, there should be evidence beyond his claims. Is he really seeing what he says, or is his war-tortured mind conjuring ghosts?

Annie desperately wants to believe her husband. But between his irrational choices and his nightmares leaking into the daytime, she’s terrified he’s going mad. Can she trust God to heal Sam’s mental wounds–or will sticking by him mean keeping her marriage at the cost of her own life?

Debut novelist Janyre Tromp delivers a deliciously eerie, Hitchcockian story filled with love and suspense. Readers of psychological thrillers and historical fiction by Jaime Jo Wright and Sarah Sundin will add Tromp to their favorite authors list.

Excerpt

I clenched my fingers around the dress gloves in my lap. Even with the thunder, a body would think the hum of tires on the road and no threat of Japanese Zeroes strafing us would help me settle, maybe even fall asleep in two hops of a grasshopper. But I was pretty sure I’d left behind whatever hop I used to have on some island in the Pacific—squashed by the military regimen and then ground down by the Japanese for good measure.

The major leaned over and retrieved his photo. I noticed his perfectly manicured hand as he brushed off a bit of dust before slipping his boy’s smiling face into a pocket of his immaculate uniform, no frayed edges in sight. Wasn’t no way this man had been anywhere near the front. I rolled my head from shoulder to shoulder. Some folks have all the luck.

I could near feel Ma reach out and swat my head for such disrespect.

Samuel Robert Mattas, I taught you better than this.

Sorry, Ma. Maybe you could intervene with the Almighty upstairs and—

“So where you headed?” The major watched me like a body might watch a dog foaming and growling. More than a little annoyance skimmed over a healthy dose of fear. Lord Almighty, I’d turned into a mangy cur.

“I know you mean well, sir. But I’m trying to sleep. It’s been a long time since . . .” Since what, I wasn’t sure. Since I’d been safe enough to sleep without waking to panic coursing through me? Since I’d been home? Since I’d had a normal conversation with a stranger without near biting his head off?

At least he’d served. It was all those 4-Fers who got themselves out of the war, lyin’ back and takin’ it easy that deserved my wrath. Well, maybe not all of them. Certainly not Doc. He’d paid mighty with the polio. Wouldn’t wish that on nobody, least of all my best friend. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and I closed my mind against the devil clawing at me. I was home, in Arkansas. My Annie and Rosie were waiting for me on the farm. Ma too. No landing run, no artillery, no Japs waiting to light up anything that moved in the waves.

Just a storm.

“I’m headed over to Crows.” The man was still chattering while sweat tickled my spine. Somebody somewhere must’ve told him talking set a man at ease. Must never have met a mountain man.

Just a storm.

I held my breath, the growls creeping closer, seeking a target . . . the world pulsing, vibrating with the sound . . . the smell of fire crawling across the Arkansas plains . . . the green of the seat in front of me surging like the algae-crusted lakes we’d drunk from in the Pacific . . . the sickness roiling in my belly . . .

“My folks live up there.” The major’s voice echoed from deep under the water. “Pop says he held a job for me in the factory over in Little Rock. Don’t know if I’ll be able to take being on the floor, but . . .”

Up front someone flicked on a light, and a face jumped up to my window—hooded eyes, searching, hunting. I lurched to my feet, cracking my head against the ceiling of the bus as I tried to push the major to safety. He latched onto my arm, dragging me under, and I yanked away, panting. Didn’t he know we needed to run?

“There’s somebody out there.” I pulled on his elbow, desperately searching for an escape route through the sea of seats.

What were they thinking letting a bus full of unarmed men meander down a highway with the headlights un-blacked? It was suicide to sit in a target all lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Ain’t no one out there.” The major held his hands out in front of him like he was surrendering to me, pleading like I was about to shoot him dead.

I glanced behind me to prove him wrong and saw my reflection ghosted on the glass. Ears sticking out of dark, messy curls. Eye sockets bruised by exhaustion. More lines than a twenty-seven-year-old man should’ve earned. Other than the whir of its tires on the road, the bus was silent, and everybody watched me. When the whispers started, I leaned over the major and said sorry before yanking the cord to alert the driver someone needed to get off the bus. I grabbed my blanket along with my peacoat, cap, and gloves before stumbling down the aisle, staggering between the seats.

Wasn’t no way I would let them all stare at me the rest of the way to the Hot Springs transportation depot. Maybe a hike would bring me to my senses. A body could hope.

I forced the bus’s door open nearly before we stopped, and waited, bouncing on the balls of my feet while the driver opened the storage locker and wrestled my pack to the side of the road.

“You sure you want out here, son? Ain’t nothin’ here but trees and coyotes.”

I nodded at the old man scratching the bare scalp under his driver’s cap.

“I know the folks who live on the other side of that hill.”

I tried to sound convincing despite the blank void stretching in every direction. Electricity may have been strung up in Little Rock, but FDR’s New Deal hadn’t lit up half of Arkansas yet.

The driver sniffed at me, seeming to smell the lie, before shrugging and pulling himself back onto the bus.

“I been in worse than this,” I called. But seeing as the door was already closed, I don’t know who I was trying to convince.

The bus eased away, picking up speed until its red taillights disappeared around a bend.

Behind me an owl hooted, and I squinted into the distance.

Now I’d gone and done it. I had no idea where I was. Somewhere past Malvern, I supposed. Only chirping insects and the curling of ominous clouds eating away at the stars greeted me.

I shivered at the creeping cold of night and pulled a scrap of oiled blanket over my head and coat. The month of May on the Arkansas plain used to feel mighty warm compared to the frosty air of my mountain home. One more thing the Pacific had changed in me.

“Best get movin’.”

One thing the last three years had taught me was how to move quick and keep going—no matter what.

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Author Janyre Tromp

In case we get to meet in person some day, you pronounce that first name Jan-air. Kind of like the stove. I’m a developmental book editor by day and a writer at night.

And that all happens from my kitchen table when I’m not hanging out with my husband, two kids, and slightly eccentric Shetland Sheepdog. Unfortunately, I spilled coffee on my super cape and then the dryer ate it. So you’ll just have to imagine I can do it all!

I have four traditionally published books—a WWII era novel, Shadows in the Mind’s Eye; a juvenile fiction, That Sinking Feeling; and two board books in the All About God’s Animals series—and 2 indie books—Wide Open, a historical novella and It’s a Wonderful Christmas, a Christmas novella collection (coming October 2021).

But my passion is writing about the beauty of the world—past and present—even when it isn’t pretty.

After all, isn’t it the beauty in the world that gets us through the day?

Hopefully after you hang out with me for a bit, we’ll be able to see things a little more clearly, find a little bit of meaning, and make a bigger impact.

With me what you see is what you get…all the Beautiful, all the Ugly, all the Me.

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