Dear Reader,

Paranormal literature is something I read, not something I write. And so I told Colleen, Janet and Susan when they asked me to contribute a story to this anthology. But I loved the concept and really wished I could drum up a vampire or a dragon or a werewolf or two in my writer’s imagination.

Susan was not willing to take no for an answer. I mentioned to her that the only paranormal topic I could handle, since it is something in which I believe, was reincarnation. That would be good enough, she said, and I realized (with some terror) that I had talked myself into being a part of this very exciting project. Of course, I still feel like a fraud when I compare my story with the other three! But you must be the judge.

Jane Austen’s Persuasion has always been my cofavorite with Pride and Prejudice. There is something very poignant about Anne Elliot, who rejected the man she loved as a young, hopeful girl because her family opposed the match and her late mother’s best friend, whom she respected and trusted implicitly, advised against a marriage that could not promise her financial security or the social position suited to her upbringing. And so Anne had to wait many years for Captain Wentworth to return as a successful man, though this time all her hopes, if not her dreams, were long dead.

My story does not use the same characters. But the situation is similar. And I asked myself what if love had found my heroine many times, over numerous lifetimes, but each time she had lost it because she had not trusted her heart more than the advice and persuasions of her loved ones? What if that lesson is still to be learned and yet again she has a chance to learn it—or be persuaded yet again to reject it?