The Novel (Working Title: The Cascade Bridge Lottery)What Inspired it-After receiving his masters, husband was

hired by a company that manufactured large winches for the offshore oil industry. In addition to sales meetings, he made frequent trips to oil exploration drilling rigs in the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, where at times he had to be lifted to the rig in a basket by a crane from the work boat. Once he had to evacuate the rig due to possible fire and blowout similar to BP rig recently The company closed in Northwest Washington in 1987 and we were forced to relocate across the continent. My husband missed the cohesive work environment and I missed our friends with whom we had shared carpools, babysitting, our grievances and accomplishments. In 1996, the new owners of the parent company contacted the core group, including my husband, and offered to finance an engineering office. Thanks to his former boss who did the marketing research and presented business plans, we returned to the place we had called home for eighteen years, since we had first come from India. For us, it was like winning a lottery. The business thrived for several years, and then merged with a manufacturing plant in Louisiana. After a few years, the plant owners moved the design office, and those who had revived the product line were left without a job once again. The small-town community spirit, friendship, unusual work experiences, financial and emotional impact of business mergers and acquisitions on the employees and their families, and what if we had won the lottery are the seeds that germinated the novel--The Cascade Bridge Lottery.

PROLOGUE--1987 A knot formed in Norma Gunnersens throat as the movers carried out the last of the boxes. The truck door closed with a bang. It lurched forward, spewing swirls of dust in front of Norma. Through the haze, she glanced back at the Cascade/Eagle Energy office building. Harold came up beside her. Norma blinked back her tears. Thirty years of my working life, packed in those boxes. All gone. I know, Honey. He squeezed her hand. Lets go home. She plodded to the car and sagged into the passenger seat. As Harold drove out of the parking lot, Norma looked back once more. The Eagle Energy expert who had supervised the transfer of drawing and project books of Cascade branch to Eagle Energy office in Houston, locked the door. Behind the building loomed the seventy-fiveyear-old machine shop where her grandfather and father had worked, the compound where they had Fourth of July picnics, and where she had met her husband. Cascade office was not just Normas job; the company was like a family. A void had filled her heart after her friends, Bryan Stafford, Keith Wilson, Steve McGill and their wives, Jane, Alicia, and Vera had to move from Cedarville to find new jobs. Today, the hole their absence had created became even bigger in her soul. Without her friends, and now without her job, Norma felt uprooted in her own surroundings. Honey, do you want to buy the lottery ticket and eat at Gateway Diner? Harold asked. Okay. Norma didnt have the energy to go home and cook. Before her friends had moved away, they made Norma promise she would continue to buy the tickets for the group. At least buying the lotto would let her stay connected to her friends. She wished she had a video player to rewind the past and relive the Cascade years. ***