Reader’s Entertainment Q & A With Romantic Suspense Author Nancy Sartor

23 January 2015

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We caught up with author Nancy Sartor to ask her about her newest release, Bones Along the Hill.

Tell us the synopsis of your book.

Ten years after the inexplicable suicide of the boy legendary funeral facial reconstructionist Neva Oakley intended to marry, she believes she is finally ready to move on. Hunky architect, Davis Pratt, offers her a future she yearns to accept, but she worries that until she knows why Gray Ledbetter, her teenage fiancé killed himself, she will never be totally free. When she and best friend, Moya Vargas, interrupt a murder in Neva’s father’s cemetery, they come to the attention of ruthless human traffickers. When Davis believes he has found his brother among those same traffickers, he and Neva join together to find the leader of the ring.

Unable to trust anyone, including the Metro-Nashville police, Davis and Neva are taken by the traffickers who intend to traffic them outside the U.S. Assisted by the victims of the traffickers, the two launch a defense that will either restore them to the life they lost or plunge them into a fate literally worse than death.

What do you feel is the most unique aspect of your story?

BONES has many unique aspects in that it deals with teenage suicide, human trafficking, the homeless and the funeral industry. The story offers more than a glimpse into each of these dark worlds, but its reviewers all agree that they are handled with great sensitivity and care.

Tell us about your main character(s).

Neva Oakley is the only child of Robert and Sylvia Oakley. Robert, a Nashville funeral director, is the last in a long line of funeral directors. Sylvia is plagued with deep depression that keeps her drugged most of the time. Neva developed her legendary skills at restoring dead faces after her teenage fiancé, Gray Ledbetter, blew his brains out. Every dead face that came into the funeral home after that was Gray’s face. She was driven to erase death from them all and honed her already considerable sculpting skills into a major talent and a lucrative business.

Neva is fiercely loyal to those she loves. She is willing to compromise but can turn into a bulldog when the situation requires it. Neva has compassion for her mother’s illness and yet resents that the illness prevented Syliva from being a mother to Neva. To compensate, Neva spent most of her days with Moya Vargas. Rosita, Moya’s mother, nurtured both girls and considers Neva as much her child as Moya.

Neva has great compassion for those who seek her services and is dedicated to easing their pain when she can. She is careful in her work and takes great pride in what she does.

What genre(s) is this and who do you think will enjoy reading it?

BONES is a romantic suspense with suspense tight enough so my editor could not read it after dark. While one thinks of women as the primary readers of any kind of romance, BONES’s reviewers have been of both genders and all have enjoyed the story very much according to their reviews.

Have you received any feedback on it yet, and if so, what was it?

BONES has twenty-one reviews on Amazon, of which 20 are five star. The twenty-first is a four-star. So far, all reviews have glowed with praise for the story, the sensitive way it handles difficult issues, the characters and the writing itself. I am very grateful for these readers who’ve chosen to share their opinions.

Tell us something about yourself that most of your readers may not know.

BONES came to me in the middle of the night when Neva whispered, “Hi. My name is Neva, and I fix the faces of the dead.” One might think this whisper frightened me, but I am a writer. I stopped in the middle of my bedroom floor and whispered back, “Really? What else do you do?”

What’s next for you?

I am fifty percent of the way through a paranormal romance set in historic Rugby, Tennessee. Jorie Wainright, descendent of the original Second Sons of English nobility who established Rugby, fled the tiny village and her father’s abuse when she was eighteen with a vow to never return. However, when her fiancé, Logan Mathis, is offered the job of a lifetime in Rugby a week after Jorie’s abusive father dies, she agrees to try living in her ancestral home while Logan gets the business going.

On her first morning back in Rugby, she discovers she is pregnant, a pregnancy neither she nor Logan wants, but one they will make no effort to terminate. Soon thereafter, ghostly Jennifer Asbury comes to Jorie seemingly intent on destroying the child. As Logan and Jorie work to rid themselves of the evil spirit, they are joined by their mutual best friend, Gordon Asbury, who is descended from the Rugby Asburys and who hides from the couple that his pregnant wife, Olivia, was also assailed by Jennifer, who ultimately did kill their unborn baby and drive Olivia to suicide.

Where can people interact with you and find out more about you and your books?