Leaving Woodbridge: The River Between Us Book IV
Woodbridge, Suffolk. Boatbuilders St John Maltravers and Jost Dekker have spent years perfecting two things: traditional craft, and keeping their private life private. Their new yacht, Curlew II, should have been a triumph-a vessel of oak, bronze, and pride. Instead, one local newspaper piece turns it into a target.
Commissions vanish. A colleague walks out. The pub goes quiet in the way that means trouble is coming. And the more the town decides it knows what they are, the less room there is to simply exist.
When the pressure becomes unbearable, Jost offers the only route that feels like air: sail east, across the North Sea, to Holland-toward family, toward safety, toward a place where being together isn't treated like a public hazard. But the sea has its own opinions, and survival demands the same thing building always has: steady hands, hard choices, and trust.
The River Between Us is an atmospheric story of love under siege, the dignity of workmanship, and the quiet defiance of choosing each other-especially when "home" stops being safe.
2) Longer product description (≈300-500 words)
Curlew II isn't just a boat. She's proof-of skill, of partnership, of a life St John and Jost built plank by plank in a small Suffolk yard. For a while, that work is enough: the rhythm of planes and mallets, the river's tide against the hull, the satisfaction of making something that will outlast you.
Then a local paper decides their lives are a "story." What follows isn't a single dramatic explosion, but the slow, everyday violence of a town turning its face away: cancelled commissions, coded accusations, and the kind of social exclusion that makes ordinary errands feel like walking through broken glass. Even the spaces that used to be neutral-work, the pub, the street-start to close.
The question becomes brutally simple: stay and shrink, or leave and risk everything. When St John's fear finally breaks into full panic, Jost proposes an escape that's as beautiful as it is terrifying-take Curlew II and cross the North Sea to Holland, where Jost's family can offer shelter and where acceptance is less conditional.
What comes next is both practical and profound: handing the yard to trusted hands, provisioning, watching the weather, and stepping onto the deck knowing there's no neat way back to the life they had. At sea, the story turns visceral-storms, exhaustion, the technical reality of keeping a boat (and two men) alive when the water doesn't care about your intentions. Yet the novel's heartbeat remains intimate: hands steadying shoulders, quiet vows, and the repeated insistence that survival is something you do together.
Rich with sensory detail and deeply character-driven, The River Between Us explores what it costs to be seen-and what it costs not to be. It's a story about craft as identity, love as shelter, and the courage it takes to choose a life that's yours, even when the world insists it shouldn't be.
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