A Bridge Across the Ocean by Susan Meissner
I have read a few of Susan Meissner's books and I have had the opportunity to meet her a couple of times discussing some of her other books. I have had A Bridge Across the Ocean on my Kindle for a while and since I have plans to stay on the Queen Mary for an all day book event and overnight stay in just a couple of weeks, I thought it was the perfect time to read this one.
I actually ended up listening to this one on audio, which had some challenges. The reader was great, able to inflect accents of French and German quite seamlessly. But there were definitely parts where I paused and thought "what did she just say?"
You have three timelines happening throughout the book: (1) Present day, Brette, who has the gift of "sight" and the ability to see "drifters" (ghosts/spirits) although she has spent most of her life trying to ignore that gift. (2) 1946 post-WWII Germany, Annaliese, a German Ballerina who ends up married to a Nazi leader who is abusive and controlling. (3) 1946 post WWII France, Simone, the daughter of a French Resistance spy who is escaping the Nazi's who are trying to kill her because she killed one of them after seeing her father and brother murdered in the streets.
You jump between characters and timelines pretty frequently and it takes quite a while to really see these people start to connect. I honestly thought about walking away from this book several times. I was about 70% into it when I felt it really picked up speed and got good.
Brette is asked to visit the Queen Mary by an old high school friend whose daughter swears she was hugged by her dead mother on the ship. This didn't make sense for a lot of reasons, but the biggest one being that her mother didn't die on that ship. Brette reluctantly agrees to go and although she can't locate the spirit of her friend's deceased wife, she does get pointed in the direction of a plaque that lists Annaliese's death as death by suicide on the ship. She then embarks on a journey to find out what happened to Annaliese and why this spirit is so upset by this.
After following both Simone and Annaliese's journeys, you learn they both end up on the Queen Mary on their way to America on the War Bride's ship. Annaliese has assumed the identity of one of her Belgium friends and is trying to hide her Germany identity. Simone is suspicious but the two women also bond over shared stories of their horrible experiences with the Germans. When Annaliese's deception is discovered, Simone helps her to escape back to France and gets her set up with an alternate identity.
We ultimately find out the Annaliese is alive and living under another name and she finishes the book by writing a letter to Brette telling her how her life turned out (very well ultimately). Brette figures out that the spirit that is guiding her on the ship is actually the spirit of the ship that has taken on a motherly role and she is upset that Annaliese's name is listed as a death on the ship because the ship's spirit knows that she helped get her back to safety off the boat. There is even a short excerpt towards the end of the book where the boat's spirit is telling the story of when it was docked permanently in Long Beach, California.
I read several reviews after finishing this book and a lot of people really didn't like the "ghost story" element of the book and felt like that was a derision from Susan's normal writing. For me, the ghost story was the best part. I liked the intensity of figuring out who the spirits were and what they wanted. I liked the story line of Brette coming in to acceptance of her gift and meeting her cousin who had the sight and didn't hide from it.
All in all, this isn't my favorite book by Susan and probably not one I would outwardly recommend to others. That being said, I AM looking forward to going to the Queen Mary in a couple of weeks and doing some ghost hunting!!
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐½
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