Trouble on the Doorstep - Softcover

Since the Jolie Gentil series is set at the New Jersey shore, I had to decide whether to consider Hurricane Sandy, which was so much more than a big storm. Sure, this is fiction. But Hurricane Sandy changed the shore--and people's lives--substantially.
 
Jolie's an appraiser, and she will certainly notice real estate values declining. She also runs the Ocean Alley food pantry, so she and her crew would have to replenish the contents of many freezers and help people who lost their home as well as its kitchen contents.
 
Ironically, hurricanes have been mentioned or appeared in nearly all of the Jolie books. As she and the reader walk through Ocean Alley soon after she's moved back to the town she lived in in eleventh grade, these are her thoughts.
 
"I've heard that when Ocean Alley incorporated there was a move to change the names of all the streets and arrange them alphabetically, but the City Council could never agree on the names so they just used letters.  However, the alphabet starts with 'B.' The Great Atlantic Hurricane removed the old boardwalk and most of 'A' Street in 1944.  It's the main reason Aunt Madge won't live any closer to the ocean."

The fictional Ocean Alley was lucky. It is situated near Ocean Grove and Asbury Park, which are about 80 miles north of where Sandy came ashore. There was damage in those towns, but not the massive destruction of some towns to the south. Ocean Alley thus sustained similar damage and began repairs.

This fifth book in the Jolie Gentil has been dedicated to "the indomitable spirit of the people of New Jersey."

Elaine L. Orr is the Amazon bestselling author of the Jolie Gentil cozy mystery series. Behind the Walls was a finalist for the 2014 Chanticleer Mystery and Mayhem Awards. The first book in her River's Edge series, From Newsprint to Footprints, came out in late 2015.

She also writes plays and novellas, including the one-act play, Common Ground published in 2015. Her novella, Biding Time, was one of five finalists in the National Press Club's first fictioncontest, in 1993. Elaine conducts presentations on electronic publishingand other writing-related topics. Nonfiction includes Writing in Retirement: Putting New Year's Resolutions to Work, and Words to Write By:Getting Your Thoughts on Paper. A member of Sisters in Crime, Elaine grew up in Maryland and moved to the Midwest in 1994.

Elaine graduated from the University of Dayton and the American University.She did some journalism course work at the University of Maryland and has taken fiction courses from The Writer's Center in Bethesda, MD, theUniversity of Iowa Summer Writing Festival, and Georgetown University'sContinuing Education Program. Elaine is a regular attendee at theMidwest Writers Workshop and Magna Cum Murder.