Читать книгу Out Of The Ashes - Cynthia Reese, Cynthia Reese - Страница 4

Dear Reader,

Until I had the privilege of working for the US House of Representatives, I had always thought a juvenile offense was no big deal. Wasn’t it sealed away, never to haunt the grown-up, much wiser version of that foolish teenage self?

The answer, I found, was no. Even a misdemeanor arrest as a juvenile can come back to haunt a person in her adult years. Men and women in their twenties and thirties, in search of college loans, job opportunities, security clearances and other things that might improve their career prospects all told me the same thing: an arrest is still an arrest, a conviction still a conviction, no matter how old you were when it happened. Even an expunged record, I found, wasn’t truly a clean slate. On a job application, you still had to check yes on that box that asked, “Have you ever been arrested or convicted of a crime?”

That’s what my character Kari faces in Out of the Ashes: one bad decision so many years before comes back to haunt her. She’s older, wiser and a good deal sadder for her bad decision, but it still impacts her present in ways she had no idea it would when she made it. And it has the power to destroy any chance of her future with Rob.

I hope you enjoy Kari and Rob’s story as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Cynthia