The Big Bridge

What does a girl do when, degraded both physically and psychically, the police just keep handing her back to her fine, upstanding, pillar-of-the-community, mean husband Jack? She runs! And run Darlene does, but not in the traditional sense, because traditional got her nowhere in the past. Darlene Mannington embarks on a harrowing journey, one borne of temporary insanity, perhaps, but one borne of necessity. Fresh out of the hospital with hematoma, bruised ribs, and battered psyche, she plots and carries out her escape – on her bike – from Battle Creek, MI, north nearly 300 miles toward what she calls The Big Bridge, The Mackinaw Bridge, a five-mile expanse that connects Michigan’s lower peninsula to its upper. In her tentative mindset, this is the place that will afford her anonymity to live out her life alone, safe, unhindered by life’s brutality. Of course, that’s not exactly what happens, because not long after her journey begins, she meets Mira, her alter ego, Quixote to her Kafka, another young woman on a different kind of adventure. As they forge north, they not only share life perspectives, but, more importantly, frightening encounters that keep Jack on the forefront of each day. When will these terrifying men in black cars, who seem to appear out of nowhere, attack? It is a story of survival in the wild, both visceral and cerebral. The culmination of the journey is a horrifying confrontation they have been expecting all along that ultimately solves more than one of Darlene's life dilemmas.