Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros to share the first paragraph sometimes two, of a book that she’s reading or planning to read soon.

This week’s first paragraph is from Past Encounters by Davina Blake, one of my TBRs. I was reorganising my bookshelves yesterday when I found this book at the back of one of my double stacked shelves. I’d forgotten I’d got it. That’s the drawback of double shelving.

It begins:

1955 Rhoda

I saw him do it. Put his fist through the window of our back door. The blurred shadow at the window, then the crack as his white knuckles burst through. I was coming downstairs with a batch of laundry and my first thought was that it was a burglar. But then I saw Peter’s white face as the splatter of glass fell away.

I dropped the clothes and rushed through the kitchen, calling, ‘Are you all right?’ Only afterwards did I have time to think, what a ridiculous question. My husband had just put his fist through a door. On purpose. Of course he wasn’t all right.

Blurb (from the back cover)

From the moment Rhoda Middleton opens one of her husband’s letters and finds it is from another woman, she is convinced he is having an affair. But when Rhoda tracks her down, she discovers the mysterious woman is not his lover after all, but the wife of his best friend, Archie Foster. There is only one problem – Rhoda has never even heard of Archie Foster.

Devastated by this betrayal of trust, Rhoda tries to find out how and why her husband, Peter, has kept this friendship hidden for so long. Her search leads her back to 1945, but as she gradually uncovers Peter’s wartime secrets she must wrestle with painful memories of her own. For if they are ever to understand each other, Rhoda too must escape the ghosts of the past.

Taking us on a journey from the atmospheric filming of Brief Encounter, to the extraordinary Great March of prisoners of war through snow-bound Germany, this is a novel of friendship, hope, and how in the end, it is the small things that enable love to survive.

Would you keep on reading – or not?