BooksChatter: ☀ A Single Breath

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for A Single Breath, a Literary fiction novel by Amanda Apthorpe ( 1 September 2015, Atlas Productions, 188 pages).

PREVIEW: Read the first six chapters with Amazon Look Inside. A Single Breath is FREE on Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owner's Lending Library.

Check out the book's synopsis and the excerpt below, as well as our Q&A with author Amanda Apthorpe.

Please do take part: comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other excerpts (☀), interviews (ℚ), and guest blog posts (✉).

Synopsis | Teaser | Author Q&A | About the Author | Tour Stops

Synopsis

“Life’s beginning and its end hinged on a single breath as though the rest was conducted in its pause.”

When the first hate letter arrives in the days after her patient, Bonnie's death, obstetrician Doctor Dana Cavanagh reads it with shaking hands before placing it next to the small news article of the court's verdict: not guilty.

Hate letters continue to trickle in, but one stands out from the others—a cryptic message with a tiny marble stone, its origin—Kos, Greece, the birthplace of Hippocrates. She had once proudly sworn his oath, "I will give not deadly medicine."

Accompanied by her sister Madeleine, Dana follows the mystery of the letter to Kos. The arrival of two more letters, and the strange appearances of a woman, beckon her to Italy and England. Despairing for her sanity, Dana persists in her crusade to come to terms with being implicated in the death of another.

Teaser: Excerpt

That night I woke at two-twenty. My mother had once told me that it was the hour that people are most likely to die. I had believed her, but in all my years of medical practice had not seen any evidence, though my work was normally concerned with life’s fragile start.

In more recent times I had become only too aware that life’s beginning and its end hinged on a single breath as though the rest was conducted in its pause.

It was another dream that had woken me and the memory of it continued to resonate. For a while I lay beneath the covers allowing it to filter through.

By three-thirty I’d poured my third cup of tea; if I was Madeleine it would have been peanut butter eaten by the spoonful to relieve anxiety.

At four a.m., a two-week-old newspaper that I had saved was spread before me. I knew what was in there but had never opened it until that moment. At page five I saw the small article, the shards of my life collected into a hundred or so words. The gist of it read:

The verdict … not guilty; the professional integrity ... restored; the plaintiff … struggling to reconcile the birth of his daughter and the death of his wife; the wife … dead from unforeseen causes.

I re-read the article and said the wife’s name aloud—Bonnie—like an incantation. I wished that she hadn’t had a name so that it might hurt less.

Exonerated of all blame … did all she could … but the words didn’t provide me with any comfort.

“It wasn’t your fault!” Madeleine had said and her expression had been desperate with the fear that I could have a breakdown.

How is a person meant to come to terms with being implicated in the death of another?

A Single Breath - available NOW!

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About the Author

Amanda Apthorpe is a Melbourne-based, Australian author of fiction and non-fiction.

She studied at the University of Melbourne and holds a PhD and a Masters degree in creative writing, is a Master of science and a teacher with over twenty-five years experience. Amanda currently teaches in the Professional Writing and Editing program at the Centre for Adult Education, and is active in the international academic community of writing. She is published by Atlas Productions.

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