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Category:
Romance
Publisher: Crooked Cat
ISBN-10: 1540887596
Type: Fiction
Pages: 180
Copyright: June 14, 2014
ISBN-13: 9781909841796
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
A romance with a difference, set mostly in Jerusalem.
Esty's life was laid out for her from birth. She would marry one of a handful of young men suggested to her and settle down to raise a large family in a tiny space within the closed community of her parents, near to and yet far from the modern world.
But Esty has decided to risk all by escaping while she still can. Will she make it to the other side? Mark, who is struggling with his own life changes, hopes that Esty will find a way through her troubles. He is fast falling in love with her. Separately and together, in Jerusalem and London, Esty and Mark need to overcome many obstacles in their endeavour to achieve their dream.
Excerpt
The young man – where had he come from? He’d asked her something. What was it? Was she all right?
“Yes. That is…” She wouldn’t have pursued it, but there was something about his face. It showed kindness, and worry… worry about her, even though he wasn’t one of her people… her former people. “Do you know how those phones work… how you pay for the call?”
She gestured to the corridor, and he went back there with her and examined one of the phones. “I think you need a phone card. You can probably buy it at one of the counters.” Despite all her anxieties, Esty noticed the foreign accent in his Hebrew speech. He sounded like a native English speaker, but not American – possibly English. She recognised the almost-not-existent R sound, as opposed to the American nasal one, and the Israeli one rolled at the back of the throat. And she noticed his voice – so pleasant-sounding and gentle. Such concern in those deep brown eyes.
Esty glanced towards the counters. She must have still looked worried, because the man said, “Would you like to use my mobile? It’s all right,” he added, holding it out to her when he saw Esty hesitating.
“Thank you.” Esty felt her cheeks burning as she took the phone.
With his arm, the man pointed to the rows of seats. “I’ll wait for you in there.”
So nice of him to let her make the call in private, but… Esty frowned at the contraption in her hand. “How do you…?”
“Press the numbers and then press this button. Is it here in Jerusalem?”
Esty nodded.
“So press zero-two and then the number.”
As the man left her for the other room, Esty took the pencil and paper out of her pocket and unfolded the paper to see the number, although she really knew it by heart. How silly of her. The person she needed to call probably was in Jerusalem, but the number was a mobile. She’d never owned a mobile phone herself, but she’d made phone calls to people with mobile phones before and knew that mobile numbers began with zero-five. She could feel her heart racing, but nevertheless managed to follow the nice man’s instructions and suddenly there was a ringing tone and the voice of another man. “Hello?”
Heart pounding, she recited the piece she’d rehearsed many times. “My name is Esty Sherman and I’ve just left my home in the ultra-orthodox… the haredi community and I don’t want to go back there. I want to be secular. Can you help me? Is this the right place?”
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