September 11, 2001, Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and an evil man change Nora Gallagher Stanis's life forever. Her happiness is shattered when her father, a firefighter with FDNY, orders her to leave the South Tower after American Airlines Flight 11 crashes into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11th. Leaving three of her friends behind, Nora becomes riddled with guilt and sorrow over their deaths. Her father's illness from lung disease five years after the terrorist attacks from working the pile at Ground Zero prompts his deathbed confession. He tells Nora of an infidelity which resulted in the birth of a daughter named Suzanne, a daughter who is the same age as Nora. Then he makes his final, awful request to her to find Suzanne, a request she ignores for years out of fear of hurting her mother and sisters. Her mother's death only a year after her father's is another painful sorrow, and on top of that is the breakup of her marriage of four years. Nora's decision to ignore her father's wishes by keeping the secret of her father's infidelity and the birth of Suzanne, create an unbearable burden on her. She becomes a sad and unhappy person, unrecognizable to her sisters, Kathleen and Maura, but more importantly, to her husband, Jonathan. A visit to the World Trade Center Memorial, where it all began, leads Nora to believe that it is time to face the secret and to honor her father's wishes - she would find her sister, Suzanne. In a journey that would take her to a small town near Sorrento, Italy, and back to New York City and Long Island, in the middle of Super Storm Sandy, Nora finds many more horrific secrets as she searches for her sister. This odyssey starts with the knowledge that Suzanne has been missing from her own life, under mysterious circumstances, for the twelve years since September of 2001. Despite the horrors that begin to unfold, Nora finds love and healing as she finally honors her father's last wish. A story of suspense, courage, and love which pits good against evil, Fate Chooses follows Nora and her family through agonizing challenges, which lead both to defeat and triumph.
About the Author: Pat was born in Brooklyn, New York, and lived in four of the five boroughs of New York City at various times. Her all girls high school experience at The Mary Louis Academy in Jamaica, New York, inspired her to want a non-traditional career for a woman of the 1960s. A graduate of Queens College of the City University of New York, Pat did just that when she became a federal law enforcement officer with the U.S. Customs Service in 1971. Wearing a uniform and a badge and carrying a gun, Pat arrested drug smugglers, among other law enforcement duties, while working at J.F.K. Airport. Later, as a Customs manager at the World Trade Center, she wrote courses for other officers, speeches for the Commissioner, and helped make changes in Customs field operations. Pat and her husband were both survivors of the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, the same year that Pat and her husband and four daughters moved to Hunterdon County, New Jersey. She retired from the U.S. Customs Service in 1996 on an early retirement opportunity after twenty-five years of federal service. After earning a master's degree in English from Rutgers University in 1999, Pat became a college English teacher first, then a high school English teacher. Pat loves being with family, friends, entertaining, cooking, reading, writing, movies, theater, and her dog and cats. Now a widow with four adult daughters and two grandchildren, Pat recently retired from college teaching in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.