The Spiral Bridge by Al Franzmeier

About the book

Little does Tillie Tilden, a Depression-era college student, realize what she is stepping into when she accepts an emergency teaching position in a southern Minnesota country school at the end of her junior year. For some strange reason, the people of this tiny rural village do not want to discuss what happened to the preceding school teacher. Eventually Tillie discovers that she committed suicide, because of an unwanted pregnancy. The doubts remain, however. Was it suicide or was it murder?

In the following spring, Tillie discovers the former teacher's hidden diary in the wood storage room of her one room school building. This discovery leads her to suspect murder, possibly by the School District's superintendent, who is also Tillie's supervisor. The diary reveals that the superintendent raped the young teacher, his niece, in his very own home, an act that led to her unwanted pregnancy.

In one climactic afternoon at the very end of the school year Tillie unwittingly stumbles into the truth when she is nearly murdered by a farm hand, the father of a retarded boy, one of Tillie's pupils. This child caused his brother's death in a farm machinery accident and now his father hates him. Amidst a violent thunder storm, the deranged and grieving father confesses that he killed the preceding teacher in a moment of rage. Tillie is rescued from her assailant by the same retarded child as her attacker perishes in the fire.

Shortly after this incident Tillie's supervisor, driven by guilt and shame, commits suicide himself.

Tillie's love for a young farmer, her conflicts with her own mother and these climactic events become major factors in the new direction Tillie's life will take as the story ends. Her life has spiraled throughout the year and now she is crossing a bridge to a new life.

A sequel is planned.

About the author

Back in the seventies Al Franzmeier accepted the call to serve as pastor of a newly forming Luthern congregation in Houston, Texas. He and his wife Sylvia watched their three children grow up in Texas, marry and become parents of their six grandchildren. During his years as a pastor, marriage and family therapist and teacher, Franzmeier became intimately aware of the joys and sorrows, dreams and despair, sucesses and failures of hundreds of individuals and families. He draws upon that experience in his writing.

Born and raised on a southern Minnesota farm during the Depression, Franzmeier is familiar with a way of life that has slipped away amidst the rapid changes of the twentieth century. In his novel he captures scenes from that era, while at the same time demonstrating that human nature never changes.

Al and Sylvia reside in the suburbs of Houston and retreat as often as possible to a second home in the mountains of Colorado.