Tumbling Down

Book excerpt: It’s all in the past where the past should stay. Amanda has stepped around the darkest shadows where the demons of a traumatic childhood lurk to build a normal life for herself; satisfying career, married, owns a comfortable home with a backyard just big enough to throw a Frisbee. Even with the recent events of her husband losing his dream job and his father, and her mother flying off to Vegas to remarry, she's optimistic things will improve. 'This is normal. Focus on work — everything will be fine.' But in the back of her mind, a haunting premonition dream from her childhood plays like a TV left on too loud, day and night, in an apartment down the hall. She tries to brush it off as nothing more than a nightmare of a damaged child. But her premonition dreams have always come true; sometimes like a newsreel flash before the event, a literal play-by-play, and at others, they need a bit of deciphering. In the dream, she was a child hiding in the hydrangeas, watching her own funeral. "So tragic," a mourner said, "only thirty-two." At eight, thirty-two was a lifetime away. Amanda J. Wilde turned thirty-two on Christmas. On a humid August morning in Chicago, she’s awakened predawn from a deep sleep under the oak in her backyard by her old dog and a ghost from her childhood. The vivid nightmares, premonition-dreams, and sleepwalking have all returned, along with Ghost and his cat — who woke her as a child when her life was in danger. She can no longer ignore the dream. Within a matter of days, tragic events cause the thin walls between the present and the past to blur with sadistic twists. Amanda heads down a dangerous path, clinging to the slippery edge of a mental breakdown, where she's forced to untangle the damaging psychological events of her childhood from the life she's built as an adult. The clock is ticking on the year of her death. Rich with emotion and driven by suspense, Tumbling Down reminds us that life is often forged by events that threaten to destroy us. *Contains violence, alcohol, and profanity. Amanda's journey continues in Refuge. *Published briefly as Butterfly Bones (2015), Tumbling Down (2021) includes deleted scenes to follow the author's original manuscript and intent. Amanda J. Wilde series Disruption (short read - prequel) Tumbling Down (novel) Refuge (novel) Asylum (novel) gifts from the gods (a short read) fiction-women-contemporary, fiction-psychological, fiction-literary