This is not just the story of a wounded warrior finally coming home to search for the love, and the world he abandoned twenty years before. It is also the story of a man who is seeking forgiveness and a way to ease the pain caused by every bad decision he’d ever made…
Author: Richard Levine
Pages: 396
Format: Paperback, Kindle
When they met in the fourth grade, it was love at first sight for Mitchell Brody and Jessica Ramirez. He was the freckle-faced kid who stood up for her honor when he silenced the class bully who’d been teasing her because of her accent. She was the new kid whose family moved to San Juan Island, Washington, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and whom Mitch had thought was the most beautiful girl in the world.
She was his salvation from a strict upbringing. He was her knight in shining armor who had always looked out for her. Through the many years of porch-swinging, cotton-candied summer nights, autumn harvest festivals, and hand-in-hand walks planning for the ideal life together, they were inseparable…until 9/11, when the real world interrupted their Rockwell-esque small town life, and Mitch had joined the Marine Corps.
This is not just the story of a wounded warrior finally coming home to search for the love, and the world he abandoned twenty years before. It is also the story of a man who is seeking forgiveness and a way to ease the pain caused by every bad decision he’d ever made. It’s the story of a woman who, with strength and determination, rose up from the ashes of a shattered dream; but who never gave up hope that her one true love would return to her. As she once told an old friend: “Even before we met all those years ago, we were destined to be together in this life, and we will be together again, because even today we’re connected in a way that’s very special, and he needs to know about it before one of us leaves this earth.”
Like Driftwood is available at Amazon.
Book Excerpt
Having first brought Jess to this place a month after the September 11th attacks, Mitch had arranged the weekend getaway after he had been presented with a no- win dare from his father to be as patriotic as Alex. When she’d learned of his enlistment, it had caught her off- guard. When he’d said basic training was twenty-four hundred miles away at Parris Island, she’d been speechless. But when he’d told her he was leaving in less than ten days, she’d struggled to catch her breath. As far as she had been concerned, South Carolina might as well have been another planet somewhere far beyond the stars that blanketed the black velvet nights of this pristine wilderness.
She had been overcome with emotion during that trip to the Clearwater River in Idaho. The crispness of the morning mountain air, mixed with the sounds of the crackling campfire and the rushing water just a few feet from their tent, had been a confluence of ingredients no master chef could have ever conceived. Jess had enjoyed every second of the experience until the sting of the news he was leaving was more numbing than the water itself. And while they both lost interest in the river’s offerings, the hours spent on the drive home were filled with tears, promises of fidelity, never-ending love, and a long life together tending to the small farm of their dreams. It was a dream they had carefully crafted during long secluded walks when even the innocent world of San Juan Island disappeared, and time seemed as if it would stop long enough for all the pieces to float seamlessly into place. Again, she drew back and set the custom-tied fly to flight and followed its arc before it kissed the water’s surface. In her mind, the only thing that ever landed more softly or with equal intent was the brush of Mitch’s lips across the back of her neck on those long summer evenings when counting fireflies had sparked dreams of the perfect life together.
Over the years, the river had become the special place where Jess could escape the pressures of the successful life she had carefully carved. Just being there enabled her to decompress, and to relive the weekend where she had surrendered to her long-suppressed desires, seducing the love of her life while simultaneously absolving him of any responsibility for having complied, albeit with little resistance. During their high school years there had been plenty of times he had taken her just short of that point of no return. And while his conscience would inevitably get the better of him, she had always hoped he would have forgotten that he was a gentleman. What she hadn’t realized at the time, was that their dreams and those promises would never come to fruition. What she could never let go of, however, was her need to make the yearly return to this place to resurrect that moment, as if continuing to do so would somehow or in some way ease her pain by keeping the possibility of that unfulfilled fantasy alive.
As she cast her line once more, she looked past the riverbank toward her tent, hoping as always that she could be transported back to the time when Mitch emerges from the warmth of their sleeping bag to watch how prolific she had become at his favorite recreational pastime. And just as she fell a little deeper into the warmth of his smile and his embrace, just as she placed her head against the memory of his chest and felt his heart beating strong and fast, she was abruptly pulled back to reality when her rod jerked with equal intensity, nearly being pulled from her hands just as the line snapped.
– Excerpted from Driftwood on the Salish Sea by Richard Levine, KDP, 2025. Reprinted with permission.
Richard I Levine is a native New Yorker raised in the shadows of Yankee Stadium. After dabbling in several occupations and a one-year coast-to-coast wanderlust trip, This one-time auxiliary police officer, volunteer fireman, bartender, and store manager returned to school to become a chiropractor.
A twenty-five-year cancer survivor, he’s a strong advocate for the natural healing arts. In 2006 he wrote, produced, and was on-air personality of The Dr. Rich Levine Show on Seattle’s KKNW 1150AM and after a twenty-five-year chiropractic practice in Bellevue, Washington, he closed up shop at the end of 2016 and moved to Oahu to pursue a dream of acting and being on Hawaii 5-O.
While briefly working as a ghostwriter/community liaison for a Honolulu City Councilmember, a Hawaii State Senator, and volunteering as an advisory board member of USVETS Barbers Point, he appeared as a background actor in over twenty-seven 5-Os, Magnum P.I.s, NCIS-Hawaii, and several Hallmark movies. In 2020, he had a co-star role in the third season episode of Magnum PI called “Easy Money.”
While he no longer lives in Hawaii, he says he will always cherish and be grateful for those seven years and all the wonderful people he’s met. His 5th novel, To Catch the Setting Sun, was inspired by his time in Hawaii.
Like Driftwood on the Salish Sea is Levine’s first foray into the romance genre.
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