Blog Tour Excerpt : Finding Jess by Julia Ibbotson

                                                           THE BLURB

Now a single mother, Jess, has struggled to get her life back on track after the betrayal of her beloved husband and of her best friend. On the brink of losing everything, including her family, and still haunted by her past and the Ghanaian drumbeats that pervade her life, she feels that she can no longer trust anyone.

Then she is mysteriously sent a newspaper clipping of a temporary job back in Ghana. Could this be her lifeline? Can Jess turn back time and find herself again before it’s too late? And what, exactly, will she find?

Finding Jess is a passionate study of love and betrayal – and of one woman’s bid to reclaim her self-belief and trust after suffering great misfortune. It is a feel-good story of a woman’s strength and spirit rising above adversity.

This is the finale of Jess’s story, the third novel of the acclaimed Drumbeats trilogy:

Drumbeats
Walking in the Rain
Finding Jess

                                                The start - or perhaps the end?


Outside,the sun is beating down pitilessly,the sweet-sour stink of rotten meat and putrefying vegetables in the open drains at the side of the road. Yes, she knows that intense heat, that smell, the sound of the Kapanlogo djembe, those kente-clad mammies from all those years before. Or was it from a few hours, minutes ago. Is it now, or was it then....?
  She can still picture it all now as her body is jarred and bumped in the hospital trolley. The streets out there are familiar, even from those memories of many years ago Over those years in between, she has often recreated in her mind, the sounds, the smells, the noise...yet somehow it seems surprising that it is, indeed, the same now, after so long... Has it all not changed, as she has changed.
  Has it not been reshaped by circumstances as she has redefined herself after the trauma of love gone tragically wrong, of betrayal, of the cruel twisting of trust. Why is her life not reflected here, the configurations of promises, cruelties, ensuing responsibilities of sole motherhood - all that has built her life since she was last here. How could it be that everything here has quietly gone on the same, while her life has not. Then merges into now.
  And why can't her mind relocate itself.
  The glaring overhead lights flashing by like a migraine, pounding the shriek: no, no, no! she knows that 'they' are running. Whoever 'they' are. Their shoes pound a beat on the floor and judder the sanitised trolley. She is aware, almost objectively, of the emergency panic that surrounds her. Yet she feels strangely apart from it, detached.
  She stares at the white bare walls. Bright lights...
  She thinks she is in a lift, looking at the sharpness of the white light above, flickering on and off as if it's about to plunge into a final darkness. It is like the American lifts, now becoming much more common everywhere: it is on the outside of the building, and yet there is glass beyond it. It rises up to the top of the building, the eleventh floor, and then it slowly descends. She tries to press the buttons to stop it before the overhead bulb bursts. But then she realises that there is no point. It doesn't have any door: there is no way out.
The pounding stops: The hospital trolley is guided through the door. Someone thrusts a mask over her face. Darkness. Nothing...

                                                                  AUTHOR BIO

Award-winning author Julia Ibbotson is fascinated by the medieval world and concepts of time travel. She studied English at Keele University, specialising in medieval language, literature and history, and has a PhD in linguistics. She wrote her first novel at 10, but became a school teacher, then university lecturer and researcher.  Julia spent a turbulent but exciting time in Ghana, West Africa, teaching and nursing. She has published both academic works and fiction, including a medieval time-slip, a children’s novel , a memoir, and the Drumbeats trilogy (which begins in Ghana in the 1960s).  Apart from insatiable reading, Julia loves world travel, choral singing, swimming, yoga, and walking in the UK and Madeira where she and her husband divide their time. She runs an editing/critiquing service for authors: details on her website. She is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, Society of Authors and the Historical Novel Society.

You can find her at

Amazon : http://Author.to/JuliaIbbotsonauthor

Author website : https://juliaibbotsonauthor.com/

Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/JuliaIbbotsonauthor

Twitter : https://twitter.com/JuliaIbbotson

Pinterest page: includes boards with pics and images that inspired each book.

 http://pinterest.com/juliai1/

Goodreads :  https://www.goodreads.com/juliaibbotson

PUBLICATION DATE : 10th August 2018

PUBLISHER : Endeavor Media

GENRE : Women's Fiction,Romance

PURCHASE LINK....

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Finding-Jess-passionate-betrayal-Drumbeats-ebook/dp/B07FK3B6NG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1541696856&sr=1-1&keywords=finding+jess

             Don't forget to check out the other stops on the tour