Wild Night @ McKenzie’s Bridge
This ancient, creaky, timber structure, straddling a creek on a narrow road in a remote area of inland Australia, becomes the proving ground where the lives of three unrelated families come together in a vortex of ultra-violence, fear and destruction.
Their collision takes place not long after a violent storm has devastated the area surrounding the bridge. One of the families is carrying a wild card, something all powerful and relentlessly brutal. It’s something that will change everything… FOREVER…
Meanwhile, as dense fog shrouds the district in an impenetrable blanket, blurring and distorting the carnage at the bridge, locals are being rescued from the rooftops of their sheds as flood waters surge across the land.
Finally there’s the good guy cop, called to the scene to wash away the blood and tend to the mutilated. He’s new in town, exiled from the city for causing a media storm. Nobody’s thought to tell him, but someone’s after him, with a score to settle.
Farmers are out early the next morning, inspecting the damage, not suspecting for one moment they are about to walk into the center of a different disaster. And this one’s not of nature’s making.
McKenzie’s Bridge… Where Nightmares become reality.
5 STAR Readers Favourite Award – Reviewed by Cloie Belle Daffon
Dennis Luke’s Wild Night at McKenzie’s Bridge took me on an unexpectedly turbulent ride. Three unrelated families had more to worry about than just the storm. They had to weather both the storm and an accident to survive.The story has steady pacing, distinctive and interesting characters, and a plot that often left me wondering what would happen next. The characters’ struggles and the suspenseful plotline kept me on my toes as I read deeper into the tale. I appreciated the short aside from the author in which he tells of his experience regarding Cyclone Yasi and the pictures in that chapter helped me visualize what the characters in the story had gone through during and after the storm. In the final parts of the book, the author has also added a section entitled ‘The Art of Road Use’ which gives useful advice on how to handle various conditions and unexpected events while driving. I learned a lot and
am thankful for the lessons I have taken away. This book also demonstrates the fury of mother nature, and it reminds us that we can never predict what the future might hold. Great job!
Author Bio
My life skills were learned, not taught. We all have our own way of digesting what we see and do in our lives.
Driving and working in many other occupations over my lifetime, and doing what I’ve been doing for so long, has taught me that you learn a lot about yourself, as well as others. Your life skills become your friend, and you pick them up not even realising you have it for later use. had to learn about the weather so I could be in control of my work commitments, especially over the last twenty years. Some of my friends might tell you I have an obsession with the weather.
Unfortunately, within a couple of weeks after getting out of my gardening business, our house was destroyed by fire, at 5am on a windy Sunday morning, gone in just seven minutes. The windy weather played a big part in the quick acting fire destroying our house in seven minutes. But driving around most of the country has also taught me a lot about being resilient, when the weather has been, how you say, horrible. Heavy rain, fog, wind, snow, narrow bridges, farms, city traffic and the list goes on. Not to mention dealing with all kinds of people and animals. Worst of all is the long journey Cyclone Yasi took from Mission Beach in North Queensland, until it left Victoria a few days later. This is how I came up with this fictional story, and it’s based on actual events on my trucking life.
I hope you enjoy the ride.
