Nights of the Road

The Book:


Nights of the Road (nightsoftheroad.com) is a spell-binding time-slip novel, told with meticulous attention to historical detail, in which excess and corruption from the Stuart court of King James the First echo down unfiltered through the time corridors of four centuries to disrupt and haunt the lives of a twenty-first century rock musician and his unwilling captive:


The Story:


Sarah James believes she has left her unhappy past in England behind by moving to Los Angeles. Her counseling practice has filled with clients, she loves her oceanside home and she is in a promising new relationship with American rock music promoter, Bob Howard.


But Sarah’s world turns upside down when a British rock musician kidnaps and holds her in his isolated cabin in the California desert. Is her drink-sodden captor simply using Sarah as a pawn to coerce Howard into mounting a tour for his failing career? Or do his ancient grievances target Sarah as well as Bob?


To free herself, Sarah will have to travel across time and continents. Her efforts to clear an ancestral legacy scarred by patriarchal abuse of power will require her to aid a disturbed and tormented man. And her captor will have to find a way to transform his long-held yearning for revenge and retribution into a willingness to forgive and trust. Nothing less will suffice if he is to convert his present path, which is leading him to ruin, into a road of healing and resurrection. Can tragedy be turned into triumph?   


Sarah’s unlikely ally in her challenge is a real-life seventeenth-century heiress. Lady Frances Purbeck has plenty to teach a persecuted woman about fighting against the odds for freedom and forgiveness. At the age of fourteen, Frances was coerced into marriage with the manic-depressive brother of the infamous Duke of Buckingham, to save her famous father’s political skin. Outraged by little Lady Purbeck’s determination to live a life of honest love, the greatest and most powerful men in England elected to pursue her, even beyond her native shores.


What are people saying about Nights of the Road?


“Rock music meets the Stuart royal court in Midi Berry’s haunting tale of two heroines, each as beleaguered as she is loved. Could the fiercely-free spirit of long-dead Lady Frances truly slip four centuries to lighten the dark times of Sarah, musician’s muse and modern Los Angeles therapist? Midi Berry’s suggestion of past life regression is as intriguing as her research into the passion and predicament of the real-life Lady Frances Coke, unwillingly married in her mid-teens but rejecting the role of any man’s plaything. In Nights of the Road, profound ideas sit lightly on pages you cannot wait to turn.  This novel of swashbuckle and self-discovery shifts not only between time, but place – from hipster LA to the ruined ramparts of Corfe Castle.  Read it fast for its pyrotechnical plot, or savor more slowly what is essentially a literary spritzer for the soul.” Madeleine Kingsley, journalist and book reviewer.


“ A compelling story that brings two time periods richly and vividly to life. It's a big, bold, ambitious and thought-provoking book and I found myself thinking about it a long time after I had finished it.” Nicola Cornick, international best-selling author.


“I expect Nights of the Road to be a success. The switching back and forth from twenty-first to seventeenth century worked seamlessly, and linguistics helped the differentiation. The novel is well written and packed with verisimilitude relating to today and four centuries back.” William Keyser, author and entrepreneur.


For more about Nights of the Road and its author, Midi Berry, visit www.nightsoftheroad.com