Publisher's Synopsis
The Gift Certificate is a story of a love relationship that transcends time. It is a romantic mystery involving loss, hope, and faith, along with the internal struggle to follow your inner voice. The story follows the journey of John and Mia, one seen and one unseen, in a mix of mind and emotions as they try to recreate their mutual destiny.
John Marcomb, a creative individual and professional from Southern California, was leading a very happy life until his wife Mia disappeared one day without explanation. Two years later, he had nearly given up hope of finding her, and had tried to move on with his life. Suddenly one day, he walked into a local clothing boutique, and his life would be changed forever. He wondered if his wife might still be alive, and travels to Paris to try and find her.
John, a logical creature by nature, must overcome and incorporate the emotions of his heart, and bring forth spirituality into his everyday life. His challenge is to combine emotions and spirituality with his logical mind to create a pathway of clues toward his search. The emotions, experiences and interesting people that he meets along the way were like nothing he had ever imagined, as he finds his own spiritual development during the process of searching for his wife Mia.
John's daughter Jordan, his best friend Charley, and his acquaintance Doctor Gregor who is knowledgeable about epigenetics, all help him initiate his search in California. However, it is the famous fashion designer Anne Ave in Paris, her magnificent assistant Olivia, and an array of her other close friends and acquaintances in Paris and the small town of Saint-Emilion, that all help lead him through his discovery process and assist him with his challenging journey.
This story begins in the Southern California locations of Orange County and Santa Monica, and then continues across the Atlantic to Paris and Saint-Emilion, France. It concludes with a stop in New York City, before coming full circle back to a closing in Southern California. The story runs slightly more than 79,000 words, consisting of 306 story pages and 32 chapters.
The Gift Certificate is written from a male perspective, with a depth of romance that is not superficial, and has evolved from John and Mia's 25-30 years of love and friendship. They always had each other's back, and John was determined to find her. The couple had a mindset of never giving up on each other. John is a logical creature, a lawyer by trade, and yet Mia is his emotional rock. He misses her insight, and realizes that he has learned more from her than he ever imagined. John's challenge is to sort through his emotions and conclude about where she could be, growing fully into his own spirituality during the process. While the love relationship is a paramount theme of the book, it is also a journey of a male figure to find his love and his own inner spirituality.
In addition to the basic literary fiction genre of a love story and a romantic mystery, major subtopics include the process of following your heart, hope, faith, positivity, relationships, spiritual development, self-awareness, overcoming doubt, internal struggles, living a happy life, and the introduction of epigenetics into a fictional novel.
