The Bridge of Deaths Book Tour: excerpt

Title: The Bridge of Deaths
Author: M. C. V. Egan
Buy the Book: Goodreads | Amazon | BN | The Book Depository

On August 15th, 1939 an English passenger plane from British Airways Ltd. Crashed in Danish waters between the towns of Nykobing/Falster and Vordingborg. There were five casualties reported and one survivor. Just two weeks before Hitler invaded Poland with the world at the brink of war the manner in which this incident was investigated left much open to doubt. The jurisdiction battle between the two towns and the newly formed Danish secret police, created an atmosphere of intrigue and distrust.

In the winter of 2009-2010 a young executive, Bill is promoted and transferred to London for a major International firm. He has struggled for the better part of his life with nightmares and phobias, which only seem to worsen in London. As he seeks the help of a therapist he accepts that his issues may well be related to a 'past-life trauma'.

Through love, curiosity, archives and the information superhighway of the 21st century Bill travels through knowledge and time to uncover the story of the 1939 plane crash.

The Bridge of Deaths is a love story and a mystery. Fictional characters travel through the world of past life regressions and information acquired from psychics as well as archives and historical sources to solve "One of those mysteries that never get solved" is based on true events and real people, it is the culmination of 18 years of sifting through sources in Denmark, England and the United States, it finds a way to help the reader feel that he /she is also sifting through data and forming their own conclusions.

The journey takes the reader to well known and little known events leading up to the Second World War, both in Europe and America. The journey also takes the reader to the possibility of finding oneself in this lifetime by exploring past lives.

Excerpt: 
He perceived himself to be a sensible man. He surrounded himself with facts and numbers. Those who worked and interacted with him saw him as a levelheaded, reasonable, and credible individual. He was a man of logic and common sense. And aside from a handful of therapists, no one knew him, not wholly.

At this point in time, he had exhausted all sensible, reasonable, credible, traditional, levelheaded, common sense, and rational options to try to solve his problem. He now found himself open to the possibility of the unreasonable, incredible, irrational, implausible, and illogical. It could even be said that he was now open to the possibility of the absurd and the ridiculous.

He functioned and lived well enough. To be sure, he functioned and lived better than most. And until now, this had been acceptable, a reasonable way of living. But now this was no longer the case, and at least in part, this was due to his age. He was now past the age of thirty, and he began to have a strong desire for a family of his own. The stress of such desires could also be a contributing factor that was aggravating his problem.

His logical mind made him fully aware of one thing, and that was the type of woman he wanted to share his life with: the type of woman he pictured himself riding off into the happily ever-after proverbial sunset with was not going to settle for “enough.” It is also probably important to note here that although he did not realize it, he was by all accounts a hopeless romantic.

Now that he was an accomplished success in his chosen field and in a financially stable situation, he felt a need to fulfill other aspects of his life. As was mentioned before, like so many men past the age of thirty, he sought to find a perfect woman, a woman to share his life with. It was not a particular physical type he imagined, for he found (as most men do) all pretty women attractive. The list of requirements for the perfect woman was more along the lines of an educational and socioeconomic nature. And, of course, he required that she have mental stability.

His problems seemed, as so many things in life, not to be fair. Fortunately, he was not one to wallow in self-pity. He knew that enough effort and resources had been spent on various traditional medicines and therapies to try to solve his problem. He had also indulged in the untraditional recreational drug and alcohol escapism cure, as some do in youth. None of the aforementioned had worked, not in the long term.

He had originally sought hypnosis to learn relaxation and control techniques. The first hypnosis session taught him how to apply relaxation techniques. In that session he learned that while under hypnosis he was always ultimately in control. He quickly learned that he could choose to stop the session at any time.

He could do this by simply opening his eyes.

The second session was quite a different story; it brought back his worst nightmare with such clarity that he had a strong physical reaction. He started moving his arms and legs in such a way that he unfortunately somehow hit the psychologist and gave the poor man a rather nasty black eye. The session was interrupted before he tasted the salty water of the sea, cold salty water, and saw the bridge (that part was always in his nightmare).

With an icepack held to his face, the therapist warned him that a certain door to his subconscious had been opened and that he might start having the dream more vividly than he had in the past. He could not imagine his dream to feel any more real than it already did. The therapist also stated that a problem having lasted seventeen years could hardly be solved overnight.

Inasmuch as he accepted that the therapy might work, he had begun to develop a level of distrust of his doctor. Frankly, he had developed a strong dislike for the therapist and felt that the man made him feel inferior.

The doctor was pushing, trying to take him to places in his mind that he was not ready to visit. And with regard to what he saw in his dreams, the therapist had discussed certain … beliefs he might consider as a possibility for his problems. These beliefs were such that most in a world of facts and numbers would find hard to digest.

He did realize that his first trip to Europe as a teenager with his school had been the beginning of his unpleasant dreams. The therapist called that the trigger. The problem began with nightmares, but those had grown into other problems. Aside from the trigger, the doctor also spoke of layers of trauma acquired after the trigger. These problems had created certain obstacles in his life.

At first, the transfer to London had been a feather in his cap, a desired jump in the ladder to reach his career goals. As the weeks passed and he began to feel more and more uncomfortable, he began to pinpoint that it had not been puberty, but rather the eighth grade trip to Europe (the trigger) when it all began. Here in London he felt this “problem” was interrupting the way he liked to function in his life and in his work.

This trigger, according to the therapist—the therapist he did not like—bridged who he had been (in a past life) with who he now was. This principle of past lives was not a tangible idea that he could relate to. If he needed to believe in reincarnation at all, he needed facts that made it seem plausible.

The dreams continued to haunt him. They started out in different ways but always ended the same … the same lettering on the wings and on the side of the aircraft; the taste of salty, cold water in his mouth; the anxious feeling of loneliness and apprehension; and, these days, the inevitability of awakening to a wet bed and the frustrating and unpleasant feeling that he had no control over this.

It was his dislike for the therapist that had introduced him to past-life regression, coupled with the embarrassment about the black eye he had given said man. That made him seek elsewhere for answers on his own. He had to tackle the problem, as he had a fear of losing all that he had accomplished: the steady climb up a corporate ladder—although in his case, it was more of a fancy marble staircase. This had been accomplished through hard work and an extensive and expensive Ivy League education.

Seeking to understand past lives was the very reason he found himself in one of London’s finest (if not the finest) bookstores that had survived the bad economy and competition from Amazon and other online sources. It was there at the bookstore, Foyles that he was holding a book from an impressive source, which explained why such an unlikely and illogical type of therapy might actually work.

About the author: M.C.V. Egan lives in South Florida with her husband and teenage son. She is fluent in four languages; English, Spanish, French and Swedish. From a young age became determined to solve the 'mystery' of her grandfather's death, she has researched this story for almost two decades. The story has taken her to Denmark, England and unconventional world of past lives and psychics. The author would like to thank Critical Past for the use of the British Airways LTD. Lockheed14 image above.

Connect with the Author: Website | Twitter | Facebook

M.C.V.EGAN Online: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Video interview

Next stop on the tour: Window on the World