Crumple Zone by Edith Parzefall

Blurb: 

Lara, a workaholic from Seattle, loses her job, drowns her frustrations in scotch, and books a trip to Chile. Instead of facing her messed up life, she escapes to South America and hooks up with a backpacker, whose bag of tricks conveniently distracts her. 

Hauling freight along the same route, trucker Enrique battles the loneliness of the Atacama Desert, imagining his wife by his side. If only she'd stop urging him to come home. With growing unease, he sets off on the return trip. When his path crosses Lara's, the impact knocks them both off their errant tracks to face unpleasant realities.

Review: 

I bought Crumple Zone on sale at MuseItUp Publishing, Inc., and I must say—Ms. Parzefall had me guessing all the way through the book as to how Enrique and Lara would meet.  I thought maybe she’d end up driving drunk and put him in the hospital, preventing him from getting home to his wife and sons.  The question was…where?

Chile is a long, thin country and according to Ms. Parzefall who has lived and traveled in South America, the Atacama Desert is something like five-hundred miles long, snaking along the sides of mountains above deep stone quarries and the Pacific Ocean.  I wondered if either Enrique or Lara might end up at the bottom of a quarry or in the sea.  Rick, the Australian back-packer Lara picked up, might have swept her off her feet and persuaded her to return to Australia with him where the people she encountered would at least speak a form of English and she wouldn’t have to look things up in her handy/dandy English/Spanish or vice/versa dictionary to communicate.

They even glimpse each other and interact briefly before they “meet” on the road.  But once they met, I still had questions that were not quite answered until the very end of the book—when Ms. Parzefall wanted me to know the full answers.  I was constantly speculating about what might be waiting around the corner, and much of the time I was wrong.  I highly recommend Crumple Zone.  If it kept me guessing, it’ll keep you guessing, too. 

Length:  225 Pages 

Price:  $5.50—As of 06-19-2013 this book is on sale at MuseItUp Publishing, Inc. for $0.99, a real bargain.  You can grab it at the link below. 

Buy Link:  http://museituppublishing.com/bookstore2/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=663&category_id=101&manufacturer_id=163&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1

You’ll notice I always include the publisher’s buy link.  That’s because authors usually receive 40% of the book price from the publisher.  Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%.  When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left.  So, if a book costs $5.99 at E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.40.  If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $0.83.

Downloading the file from your computer to your Kindle is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive.  Plug the USB end of your chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from your “Downloads” box to your Kindle/Documents/Books directory.  I actually download my books using “Save As” to a “Books” file I created on my computer that’s sorted by my publisher, friends, and books “to review,” and then transfer them to my Kindle from there.  That way, if there’s a glitch with my Kindle, the books are on my computer.  Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement. 

Thanks for visiting.  RIW