A Bridge Across the Ocean

A Bridge across the Ocean is another superb dual-time book written by Susan Meissner. Oh, how I wish I could write as well as she.

1946 – A ship full of war brides set sail from Southampton to New York aboard the legendary RMS Queen Mary, a flagship for the Cunard White Star Line.

The year is 1946, and the war is finally over. It is with great anticipation, mixed with a measure of trepidation that the women and children board the ship that will reunite them with their American husbands.

All that is, except, for one single woman who is not who she claims to be. Seeking the freedom and anonymity of a new life in a new forwarding thinking country, she wishes for nothing more than a successful escape from the violence and deceit

that shadows her every move. She meets Simone, a French survivor, who has every right to instantly dislike her room-mate, haunted as she is by her memories of lost love. Only one of them will exit the gangplank at journey's end.

Present day – Brett Caslake is not your average person – she sees ghosts. Having spent a lifetime denying her ability she is drawn reluctantly into assisting a child who is insistent that her dead mother is very much alive and living on the now retired RMS Queen Mary, now in its permanent mooring at Long Beach California. Her act of good faith will set her on a course of self-discovery as she unravels a truth long ago put to bed.

A Bridge across the Ocean is an alluring story that introduces a very real ship upon which the fictional characters mingle before the book reaches its thought provoking conclusion. I loved this book.