Burning the Map

The choices Casey Evers has made in her twenty-six years aren’t exactly making her happy. In fact, her life is so on course — college, law school, boyfriend, job offer — that it’s actually off. So, before she slides into fourteen-hour days at a Chicago law firm, she heads to Rome and Greece with her two best friends for one last hurrah. The thing is, her best friends haven’t really been all that close to her since she started seeing John two years ago, she hasn’t been all that close to John lately, and she’s awfully partial to Mediterranean men . . .

I rest my head against his shoulder. The scooter starts to fly again, and Rome whizzes by — a myriad of fountains, marble statues, larger-than-life doors with gigantic handles, streets that look like alleys . . .

The rigidity that has settled in my bones and head over the past year seems to thaw a bit. Yet with the thaw comes an army of questions from some unused corner of my brain. What about John? Will you tell him about this little excursion, this man you are hugging? What happens when you get back, when you have to start work, when you can no longer escape the world? I lift my head and let the wind snarl my hair around my face, trying to forget these questions, the ones with rifles in hand that are waiting to fire holes in my flimsy curtain of contentment.

Set against the backdrop of sparkling beaches and old-world villages, Burning the Map ignites the fire within us all, to shine in unexpected ways . . .