Marshall Flamm

Before the Tide Runs out Marshall Flamm

Set in the summer of 1969, Neal McKenna embarks on a journey into his wartime past under the guise of a college graduation gift for his son, Colin. The two travel from their home in the Naugatuck River Valley in New England to Normandy, where twenty-five years earlier, Neal McKenna had jumped with the 82 Airborne to his near death only to be saved by a mysterious French woman. The lasting impression this woman?s rescue had on Neal in his few days with her, being brought back from impending death, is his driving motivation for seeking her out so many years later to express his deepest gratitude. Neal and Colin will travel down a road of memories, hurt, adventure, grief?s, and encountering characters that breathe life into the war and express in detail events that defined the spirit, strength and anguish of the invasion and aftermath of Normandy. And yet, will they find this mysterious woman? Is she still living? Was she captured by the Germans after Neal was able to escape back to his Unit? All the while, Neal?s wife Amy has been left at home in New England, secretly planning to revisit her old ghosts of years ago as well, leading her to the Outer Banks off the coast of North Carolina. This compelling story is as deep as the ocean divide from the French coast of Normandy to the sandy beaches of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the parallel of life connecting lives, hearts and souls from the past to the present with profundity.