AUTHOR’S NOTE
I’m delighted to continue my Blue Moon Harbor romance series. Bookseller Iris Yakimura was introduced in the first book in the series, Fly Away With Me, and I knew she’d deserve her own love story one day. Musician Julian Blake was also briefly mentioned in that book, when heroine Eden saw him onstage and said he looked like a “tarnished angel.” Her comment was more perceptive than she realized.
If you’re familiar with my books, you know there’s always a heartwarming romance with a happy ending. You know that I write about characters who are complex, with weaknesses as well as strengths, with tough challenges to face, and with lessons to learn. And you know that I also address some serious contemporary issues. Sail Away With Me was in some ways the toughest novel for me to write, because of one issue it addresses.
Sail Away With Me is a story about strength and growth and moving forward with life. It’s about wisdom, the support of family and friends, and the journey toward finding true love. It deals with the heroine’s struggle to overcome her painful shyness and the hero’s attempt to overcome past trauma. The trauma of child sexual abuse.
Child sexual abuse is a crime, and it is a horrific subject to think about, but I wanted to write about it because it’s more prevalent than we’d like to think. It’s impossible to collect accurate statistics because the crime is underreported and because definitions of sexual abuse vary. However, I’ve seen information indicating that in the United States, a child is sexually assaulted every eight minutes, and that one in five girls and one in twenty boys is a victim.
In most cases, the experience is traumatic and has an impact on the child’s emotional development and on her or his adult life. It can cause suicidal thoughts.
The crime is underreported for a variety of reasons, including the child’s embarrassment and misplaced feelings of guilt and shame, as well as implicit or explicit threats from the abuser. Also, the child often fears that she or he won’t be believed, as against the word of an adult—and, sadly, that is often true.
If you know or suspect a child is being abused, your first priority should be the child’s safety. In an emergency situation, call 911 or any other local emergency service. There may be a legal obligation, in your jurisdiction, to report abuse. Obtaining counseling support for the child should be considered. There are numerous online resources to provide more information about the crime of child sexual abuse and the needs of victims, and to point you to resources in your community.
If you’re an adult who was abused as a child, you can find support resources as well. For example, do an Internet search for “adult survivors of sexual abuse.”
Moving on to a more pleasant subject, it’s time to say thank you. The first one goes to the readers who enjoy my books, tell their friends, maybe write a review, and occasionally drop me a note. Those notes are so very encouraging on the days when my writing muse is being ornery.
Thank you to all the wonderful folks at Kensington, especially my editor, Martin Biro, who is always a delight to work with, and his assistant James Abbate, who makes all the admin-type things run so smoothly. Thank you, too, to my agent, Emily Sylvan Kim, of Prospect Agency. We’ve been together ten fabulous years!
I’m so grateful to my critiquers, who provided valuable feedback on this book: Rosalind Villers, Alaura Ross, and Nazima Ali. Thanks also to the following people who helped with odds and ends of research: Roberta Cottam, Vanessa Grant, Sharon Gunn, Solveig McLaren, Andrew Hull, Luranah and Alasdair Polson, Yvonne Rediger, and Éliane Verret-Fournier. All errors (and deliberate bendings of the truth) are mine, not theirs. Very special thanks to Roberta Cottam, who came up with the title of this book.
I love sharing my stories with my readers and I love hearing from you. You can email me at susan@susanlyons.ca or contact me through my website at www.susanfox.ca, where you’ll also find excerpts, behind-the-scenes notes, recipes, a monthly contest, the sign-up for my newsletter, and other goodies. You can find me on Facebook at facebook.com/SusanLyonsFox.
 
 
A footnote:
 
I finished this manuscript in the fall of 2017, having no idea how much our world—at least in Canada and the United States—would change in the coming year in terms of outing and condemning sexual abuse and sexual harassment. The #Me Too movement began in the fall of 2017 and Time’s Up followed at the beginning of 2018, and they continue to gain momentum. I’m encouraged to see that victims are feeling empowered to come forward, and also to see sexual predators being exposed and sanctioned for their actions. I wonder if the initial response by the police and community to Julian’s allegations would be any different today . . .