Unfinished Business

From the author of The First Christmas of the War and Thanksgiving, 1942: an "edgier and darker" historical novel, also set in mid-20th century Pittsburgh:

Roseanne DeMarco often thought about her brief two-month affair with Frank Donaldson throughout the nearly nine years that followed those summer months of 1942. Almost every time, in addition to slipping into a near-trance as she vividly relived some moment or another during the affair that was burned into her memory, she found herself asking the same question she had asked herself so many times while it had still been going on: Why?

The explanation––the justification––offered by Roseanne’s conscience for what had happened in July and August of 1942 was always the same: she simply hadn’t felt truly married, with her brand new husband Joey she had suddenly realized she barely knew before he was called away to the Army. And when the suave Frank Donaldson, the cousin of one of her friends, joined the group of young women in a nightclub one evening Roseanne all but forgot that she was a newlywed. The affair abruptly ends after two months when Frank is called away to the Army and at almost the same moment––and quite a surprise and shock to Roseanne––her husband Joey winds up coming home and assigned to guard Pittsburgh's steel industry for the duration of the war.

Flash forward to mid-1951.

After nine years of tranquil (if complacent) marriage to Joey DeMarco and three sons, what would be Roseanne’s explanation and justification in the years to come for resuming her affair with Frank when he suddenly reappears in the middle of June that year…only weeks after Roseanne’s husband was called back into the Army and sent to fight in the Korean War? And what will be the outcome of this renewed affair when––or if––Roseanne's husband returns from war?

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Trivia: Look for a cameo appearance by Joey DeMarco, the "off pages" husband in UNFINISHED BUSINESS, in Alan Simon's just-published novel THANKSGIVING, 1942.

Also coming in early December, 2012: visit the UNFINISHED BUSINESS page on alansimonbooks[dot]com for an alternative "bittersweet" ending to UNFINISHED BUSINESS along with the backstory for why an alternative ending was written.