Susan Krajewski seems to have it all: career, boyfriend, strong social network. She's even stayed friends with her ex-husband Frank, despite the fact that he left her when he fell in love with another man. Beneath the surface, however, you'll find a different Susan: a woman masking seriously damaged self esteem and great emotional pain. When Frank is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Susan's carefully structured world begins to disintegrate. Although she's convinced herself that she's no longer in love with Frank, when he and his life partner, Clayton, ask for her help, Susan can't refuse. She stands by Frank in his final days, juggling his needs with those of her boyfriend Noah, and with the demands of her career. Susan pays a steep price for her loyalty. Caught up in his own family crisis, Noah abandons her. She loses her job. Then Frank dies, and Susan is ambushed by a riptide of grief she can't control. In the aftermath of Frank's death, Susan quarrels with her best friend Margaret, who doesn't offer the kind of sympathy Susan wants. But how could anyone know the depth of Susan's loss? She's worked hard at hiding her feelings. As Susan sifts through the wreckage of her life, she wrestles with her fears and emotional scars and comes to accept that she can't heal without help. She acknowledges all that she's lost and realizes all that she still has. Along the way, she finds love and support in unexpected places, and as she begins to heal, she comes to understand that, painful as they can sometimes be, it's her ties to others that make life worth living.
About the Author: Bonnie Schroeder was bitten by the writing bug in the fifth grade and never recovered. Among her published short stories are "The Go-Between," "What's in a Name?" and "A Losing Game." She was also a finalist in the 2012 ABQ Writers Co-Op bosque Fiction contest for her short story "Intervention." In the nonfiction arena, she wrote a weekly column in Drama-Logue on the subject of "survival skills" for actors and other theater professionals and has written e-newsletters for a chapter of the American Red Cross. She has also completed two feature-length screenplays, one of which, Smoke and Mirrors, was a semi-finalist in the Monterey County Film Commission's competition. Long-form fiction, however, remains her first love, and Mending Dreams is her first published novel. Bonnie lives in Southern California with two very spoiled German shepherd dogs and two equally pampered cats and is currently finishing up her next novel.