Chasing Lightning

About the Book

Scarlett Faye Turner is a seductive charmer who leaves her poor, southern roots in the late sixties searching for what she calls The Big Three: power, fame and money.  En route to fulfilling her ambitions, Scarlett’s colorful detours into sexual self-discovery take her to Hollywood, New York, New Mexico, Paris, Greece and to a remote village in Morocco.

The precocious offspring of an alcoholic father who died when she was four and an overworked, uneducated mother, Scarlett realizes at a very tender age she was not meant to be poor.  She decides to rectify this by becoming a famous writer. Blessed and cursed with more than her share of smarts and looks, there’s little she won’t do to achieve her goal.  

Scarlett is determined to not even let love stand in the way, at least that’s what she vows early on in her young life.  As far as she’s concerned, love is not only blind, “it’s a disease that makes people mad with desire and then promptly destroys their lives.”  After all, it had undone more people in her hometown than she could count.

Love might be taboo for Scarlett but a little romance isn’t.  Indeed, she has one erotic adventure after another. Everyone falls under her sway including her college roommate, the roommate’s boyfriend, an in-the-closet, lesbian movie actress, and a Hemingway-type adventurer.  In time, Scarlett’s affairs become an increasingly necessary distraction, a way to forget about beautiful Gina Jamison, a girl she fell for in high school and later spent one unforgettable summer with in Paris.  It was a passionate relationship that ended abruptly when Scarlett discovered Gina’s devastating secret.

Scarlett eventually wants to reconcile but by then is afraid too much may stand in the way.  A bitter lesson is learned – being careless with love can alter destinies. Will it alter hers and Gina’s, or will Scarlett finally overcome her fear of intimacy and embrace love?

About the Author

Rachel York was born in a small town in Texas and educated in the United States and Europe. While at the University of Madrid studying languages and anthropology, she supported herself doing commercials for Spanish television. She currently resides in Los Angeles where she ghostwrites extensively for others. This is her first novel.