{"product_id":"2940013760448","title":"When We Were Married - 2 - Second Acts","description":"Four words ended their marriage. \u003cbr\u003eIn the wake of those four words, the 18-year marriage of Jacksonville Assistant State Attorney William Maitland  and University of North Florida Associate Business Professor Debbie Maitland  ends in a painful and hard fought divorce.  \u003cbr\u003eAs Volume Two begins, Maitland faces the greatest challenge of his professional life as he must stand against the African American community, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and his own boss in his prosecution of a heroic black cop who killed three men during a home invasion.\u003cbr\u003eAND he must decide whether to undertake a court case he almost certainly cannot win against a cold blooded murderer who beat his ex-wife and his unborn son to death, and probably will become a rich man as a result of the murder.\u003cbr\u003eAND he must prepare for a possible prosecution of a kingpin in a Mexican drug cartel, a vastly powerful organization which has already slaughtered the families of two prosecutors in the Northwest, and will target his family if he takes up their challenge.\u003cbr\u003eBut for their part, the shadowy men in Mexico who have thrown down a challenge to the U.S. legal system must make a decision on whether they are prepared to take on “The Angel of Death,” as Maitland has unwillingly become known internationally. His new, and unwanted, fame is the result of a devastated daughter’s words and a well-written news story that is picked up around the world.\u003cbr\u003e Not only must the leaders of the Mexican cartel challenge a man whom death seems to follow, even if most of that is merely PR, but they will soon find they are challenging a man at whose back stands a deadly criminal organization. \u003cbr\u003e  The Columbian Crime cartel is headed by the legendary Old Man who does not fear the Mexican cartel, their assassins, or any government in the world. And if they strike at Maitland,  the Colombian crime lord has put the Mexicans on notice that he can and will reach into the deserts of Mexico to strike at their heart.\u003cbr\u003e In his personal life, Maitland  has transformed himself from the flabby couch potato who lost the love and lust of his wife,  Debbie Maitland\/Bascomb, to a younger man.  \u003cbr\u003e        But torn adrift from the anchor that was his married life, he now finds himself facing the question of what to do about Aline des-Jardins, the married French woman who is the only woman he has ever loved, with the exception of  Debbie Bascomb. \u003cbr\u003e  Aline has followed him to Jacksonville. He walked away from her once before, after she gave him back his manhood, because she is married to a French federal prosecutor he considers a friend. Maitland was  unwilling to do to Philippe Archambault what UNF professor Doug Baker did to him when he stole Maitland’s wife.\u003cbr\u003e     But now that Aline is in Jacksonville, can Maitland send her away again? Can he do the right thing, especially when he isn’t sure anymore what the right thing is?\u003cbr\u003e And he must do his best to keep his new love away from his old love, which in a city of a million people might not seem that difficult except that Aline is nitro and Debbie is pure flame and when they meet, Maitland doesn’t want to be around.\u003cbr\u003e While Maitland is preoccupied with professional challenges and Aline’s presence, Debbie is finding that beauty is no shield against loneliness and pain.  A woman who has never lacked for male attention, in the wake of her divorce she’s lost a husband and a lover, is estranged from her children, besieged by would-be seducers, and trying to find her footing in a new career.\u003cbr\u003e  She’s done what she knows to be the right thing in seeking a life apart from Bill Maitland, but doing the right thing hasn’t protected her from psychosomatic illnesses, nightmares involving a dead aunt, and emotional distress that leads her to the office of empathetic psychiatrist Dr. Ernst Teller. \u003cbr\u003eTeller, who is also the main criminal psychiatrist for the Third Judicial Circuit,  plays psychic detective seeking to discover the roots of  the emotional turmoil that is bringing up nightmares of a brutal sexual assault and a burning rage in Debbie toward a husband she claims to have lost all feelings for.\u003cbr\u003eWhile she struggles with rage, she tries to understand why she can’t  break the emotional ties to a man  she believes left her long before she left him and finds herself becoming increasingly closer to writer Clint Abbott. He is becoming her best friend, but might be a lot more…if she could let it happen.\u003cbr\u003e   As the world of crime and brutal violence circles closer to their life in Jacksonville, Bill Maitland and Debbie Bascomb are learning that sometimes being divorced and apart can be as painful and confusing as being trapped in an unhappy marriage.\u003cbr\u003e   Is it possible to have a a Second Act in two lives ripped apart by neglect and obsession and betrayal and lies? Or is it too late to ever go back?","brand":"William Marden","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47068917235952,"sku":"2940013760448","price":9.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013760448_p0.jpg?v=1763589899","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013760448","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}