Please Welcome Suspense Novelist Heather Gudenkauf

We are delighted to welcome novelist Heather Gudenkauf as our guest on her BookTrib blog tour. We encourage you to follow along!

Heather's new book is the suspense novel One Breath Away (Mira Books, June 2012 trade paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats).

We are pleased to provide an excerpt from the book as well as offer one of our readers a chance to win a copy courtesy of the tour coordinators; details below.

— ◊ —

One Breath Away
Heather Gudenkauf
Mira Books, June 2012

Excerpt …

 "Looks like someone broke a window at the end of the hallway. I’m going to go check. You guys stay in your seats. I'll be right back."
 Before he can even leave the classroom the shaky voice of Mrs. Lowell, the school secretary, comes on the intercom. "Teachers, this is a Code Red Lockdown. Go to your safe place."

Synopsis: In the midst of a sudden spring snowstorm, an unknown man armed with a gun walks into an elementary school classroom. Outside the school, the town of Broken Branch watches and waits.

Officer Meg Barrett holds the responsibility for the town's children in her hands. Will Thwaite, reluctantly entrusted with the care of his two grandchildren by the daughter who left home years earlier, stands by helplessly and wonders if he has failed his child again. Trapped in her classroom, Evelyn Oliver watches for an opportunity to rescue the children in her care. And thirteen-year-old Augie Baker, already struggling with the aftermath of a terrible accident that has brought her to Broken Branch, will risk her own safety to protect her little brother.

As tension mounts with each passing minute, the hidden fears and grudges of the small town are revealed as the people of Broken Branch race to uncover the identity of the stranger who holds their children hostage.

      

— ◊ —

Photo provided courtesy of
Heather Gudenkauf; Photo credit Weber Portrait Design

Heather Gudenkauf was born in Wagner, South Dakota, the youngest of six children. At one month of age, her family returned to the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota where her father was employed as a guidance counselor and her mother as a school nurse. At the age of three, her family moved to Iowa, where she grew up. Having been born with a profound unilateral hearing impairment (there were many evenings when Heather and her father made a trip to the bus barn to look around the school bus for her hearing aids that she often conveniently would forget on the seat beside her), Heather tended to use books as a retreat, would climb into the toy box that her father's students from Rosebud made for the family with a pillow, blanket, and flashlight, close the lid, and escape the world around her. Heather became a voracious reader and the seed of becoming a writer was planted.

She graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in elementary education and has spent her career working with students of all ages and continues to work in education as a Title I Reading Coordinator.

Heather lives in Iowa with her husband, three children, and a very spoiled German Shorthaired Pointer named Maxine. In her free time she enjoys spending time with her family, reading, hiking, and running. She is currently working on her next novel.

— ◊ —

For a chance to win a copy of One Breath Away, courtesy of the BookTrib, visit Mystery Book Contests, click on the "Heather Gudenkauf: One Breath Away" contest link, enter your name, e-mail address, and this code — 5012 — for a chance to win! (One entry per person; contest ends August 1st, 2012.)

— ◊ —

And that's not all! Tomorrow, Thursday July 26th at 3 PM ET, Heather will be live chatting with readers! Use this link or click on the banner below to learn more.