A warm welcome to Laurie Wood, who lives in Central Canada and writes inspirational romantic suspense with an edge of danger. She’s also a military wife who’s raised two wonderful special needs children to adulthood. They’ve lived all over Canada and are still on that journey. When she’s not writing she can be found at her spinning wheel, knitting, or hanging out with her dogs in the garden.
AND… Laurie has served as a police officer. This hooked me immediately–in her series about PTSD and police officers, she knows what she’s talking about! She’s giving away an e-copy of Northern Protector to a commenter. Thanks for visiting!
If He’s Not a Cop, He’s Nobody
Constable Ben Koper is still healing from the polar bear attack that almost killed him. Nine months after it happened, he returns to Churchill, Manitoba, a changed man—scarred more than just physically. PTSD is his new shadow, haunting his every step, and he can’t seem to kick the pain meds he shouldn’t need anymore. He’s determined to prove, to himself and his colleagues, that he’s still up to his job. Failure isn’t an option.
ER nurse Joy Gallagher spent the entire last winter texting with a healing Constable Koper. What started as friendly concern from this single mother has grown into full-fledged romantic feelings, and she’s eager to level up their friendship and introduce him to the idyllic comfort of small-town life. Until a teenager is murdered at a summer party. The crime is strikingly similar to the cold case murder of Joy’s foster sister, stirring old trauma Joy has never fully dealt with.
When another victim is snatched in town, Ben and Joy must confront their own demons, and join forces to track down an elusive killer. The race to rescue the next victim before it’s too late will test Ben and Joy to their limits. Can they survive their encounter with this heinous killer, or will the past destroy them.?
NORTHERN PROTECTOR is the second book in my Heroes of the Tundra series. (NORTHERN HEARTS is a Christmas novella set in the same town of Churchill, Manitoba) The hero, Ben Koper, is the best friend of the hero from the first book. He’s actually mauled by the polar bear in book 1, and this book is the story of his recovery from PTSD from that traumatic experience and injury, as well as how he grapples with addiction to painkillers.
I wanted to write about PTSD because it’s more common in the life of police officers than we like to think. Not every officer will face down a polar bear, but police work isn’t like it’s shown in TV or the movies. When I was a police officer, I faced off against a man with a gun one-on-one, several who wanted to use a knife on me, a hostage situation outside a liquor store, and was in many, many physical fights trying to arrest someone.
I’ve arrested rapists, drunk drivers, men who’d just beaten their wives or children, women who’d beaten other women, women who’d beaten up their children, and people in bar fights. And while I was never shot or knifed, I had my wrist broken once by a biker who refused to give up his booze when I said he couldn’t take it back. I won that fight but ended up with a broken wrist and the rest of the summer off because I was in a cast. I also got a permanent back injury from being thrown against the concrete wall in our prisoner’s cell block by a guy on some kind of drugs who mistook me for someone else.
Back in the mid-1980’s when I was a police officer, no one called the after-effects of situations like these PTSD. We just had to “shake it off”. However, I can tell you that being in a hostage situation isn’t like it is on shows like “The Rookie” or “Law and Order.”
Nor was going one on one with a biker who outweighed me by about a hundred pounds like anything I’d ever seen on TV. The “bad guys” don’t conveniently fall to the ground with one punch to the jaw. It’s more like a Mixed Martial Arts battle, heavy on the face punches.
When police officers take off their uniforms after their shift, they’re just regular people. They have to make split-second decisions about their safety and that of others around them. A situation can change in an instant. On a tv show, the police might be out of breath after a foot chase, but they don’t have nightmares, or feel like their skin is crawling the next day when they go to pick up their start-of-shift coffee.
This book is my favourite of the ones I’ve written so far. It takes courage to go back to work after a traumatic experience on the job. I hope I’ve done our police officers proud with this story.
ER nurse Joy Gallagher spent the entire last winter texting with a healing Constable Koper. What started as friendly concern from this single mother has grown into full-fledged romantic feelings, and she’s eager to level up their friendship and introduce him to the idyllic comfort of small-town life. Until a teenager is murdered at a summer party. The crime is strikingly similar to the cold case murder of Joy’s foster sister, stirring old trauma Joy has never fully dealt with.
When another victim is snatched in town, Ben and Joy must confront their own demons, and join forces to track down an elusive killer. The race to rescue the next victim before it’s too late will test Ben and Joy to their limits. Can they survive their encounter with this heinous killer, or will the past destroy them.?
Amazon.com:https://amzn.to/3femV6Y
Amazon.ca: https://amzn.to/2KfyoYq
Anaiah Press: https://bit.ly/3pGPrD6(Print copies)
Bio & Social Media Links:
Laurie loves to hear from readers and always replies, so feel free to get in touch with her:
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