by Juni Fisher

Pull back the canvas circus tent flap. Step inside. Cotton candy is a dime. The music begins, the audience hushes in anticipation. The spotlight glimmers on the performers, and the rest of the world melts away as the magic unfolds.

Trapeze flyer Tattooed Matilda finishes her signature act one night and seconds later, she’s hurtling toward the tanbark floor of the ring. Horribly injured she struggles to make sense of her condition while she grasps at memories of her troubled childhood and life as a star of a rag-tag troupe. Outside her circus family, Matilda remembers one true friend: Lucky Eddie.

Eddie is a sardonic, war-scarred, tattoo artist with a monkey called heroin on his back who bestows Matilda’s first tattoo when she’s a shy, misfit teen. Their seemingly strange friendship deepens over the years, enduring Eddie’s battle with addiction and Matilda’s craving for tattoos while she chases the intoxicating lure of the spotlight. Theirs is a bond forged in tattoo ink. 

​But the circus tent that has fed Matilda’s soul becomes a curtain of unimaginable heartache when tragedy befalls the world she knows and loves and plummets her into a downward spiral that even bright lights, applause, and a new tattoo can’t mask.

Indelible Link cues up the music for a high flying, wild ride back to the time when the train pulled into town and a traveling circus arrived to promise a magical adventure under the big top.