Tremors of the Heart

Jared Winters, Aussie geotechnical expert, is working for the California Science Center, to test a section of California’s Big Sur for stability in the vicinity of a major fault line. An earthquake looms. Quiet so far. No tremors yet. But everyone knows they are coming. But Jared has been a witness to the very real trauma of earthquakes on his last job in Japan. He carries with him memories of what an earthquake can do.

When he meets Megan Connolly, jogging on the wild beach sands of the Big Sur, he takes one look at her beach house, dangling on the cliffs above them on fragile stilts and has new images of this beautiful redhead tumbling down into the rolling combers of the Pacific Ocean with the tremor-shattered debris of her home. He warns her to leave for somewhere more stable, but Megan is a product of a childhood without stability. Her parents are roaming photojournalists who looked at having a child as a problem. She has grown up with her grandparents, running away for summers at this beach house, finding a job as an elementary teacher at a small, adobe school nearby and settling into calm for the first time in her life. She is even able to help a small girl in her class find security of her own.

Jared’s tremors come both from the horror of the real one waiting under the earth and the loss of this woman he is fast growing to love. Attraction and chemistry have become a lot more. But will that be enough to get her to safety? Megan’s tremors are the fears that she will have to leave everything calm behind. Ultimately, she has to decide between the false security of a house on shifting ground and the flexibility and strength that love and a life with Jared could bring. But danger is coming closer and the first tremors are starting to shake everything around her.

When the big one finally comes, will the tremors of her heart end in the collapse of everything that is now more important?