The Last Bridge: A Novel (Random House Reader's Circle)

Book Description
For ten years, Alexandra “Cat” Rucker has been on the run from her past. With an endless supply of bourbon and a series of meaningless jobs, Cat is struggling to forget her Ohio hometown and the rural farmhouse she once called home. But a sudden call from an old neighbor forces Cat to return to the home and family she never intended to see again. It seems that Cat’s mother is dead.

What Cat finds at the old farmhouse is disturbing and confusing: a suicide note, written on lilac stationery and neatly sealed in a ziplock bag, that reads: Cat, He isn’t who you think he is. Mom xxxooo

One note, ten words--one for every year she has been gone--completely turns Cat’s world upside down. Seeking to unravel the mystery of her mother’s death, Cat must confront her past to discover who “he” might be: her tyrannical, abusive father, now in a coma after suffering a stroke? Her brother, Jared, named after her mother’s true love (who is also her father’s best friend)? The town coroner, Andrew Reilly, who seems to have known Cat’s mother long before she landed on a slab in his morgue? Or Addison Watkins, Cat’s first and only love?

The closer Cat gets to the truth, the harder it is for her to repress the memory and the impact of the events that sent her away so many years ago.

Taut, gripping, and edgy, The Last Bridge is an intense novel of family secrets, darkest impulses, and deep-seated love. Teri Coyne has created a stunning tapestry of pain and passion where past and present are seamlessly interwoven to tell a story that sears and warms in equal measure.

Amazon Exclusive: Teri Coyne on The Last Bridge

Many people ask me how I went from doing stand-up comedy to writing a dark debut novel. For me, writing fiction is a lot like doing comedy. In comedy, the truth is hidden in the humor, like a pill ground up and mixed into a spoonful of jelly. It’s there, but you don’t feel it right away. In fiction, the story does the same thing. Characters can say and do what you cannot (or would rather not) do. In essence they are the “jelly.”

At first glance, we think of comedy and tragedy as opposite ends of the spectrum of experience but as many of us know, it is not the events of our lives that define our happiness, it is how we choose to perceive and process them. I make that same distinction in writing. For many people The Last Bridge is a dark novel, for me it is a story of a woman who is trying to get a handle on how she wants to perceive her story. In spite of what she has been through, she has a sense of humor (albeit a very dark one.) I think that helps her survive.

I don’t distinguish between funny or sad, light or dark, romance or adventure. I want to tell you a story and take you somewhere you have never been. I want to you to care about how it is going to end and hopefully, just like that spoonful of jelly, you might feel a little better (or different) without even noticing. --Teri Coyne

(Photo © Michael J. Richter)