WHERE THE HEART WRITES

Santa Burke Trades Real Estate Closings For Book Chapters––And Finds Her Ultimate Fairytale on her Barrington Hills Farm.

Santa Burke spent her childhood under the bright lights of the stage and her adulthood amid the quiet beauty of her Barrington Hills farm. But perhaps she’s happiest when she’s in her office that overlooks her pastures, giving voice to the stories she’s long tucked away in her own heart.

“That office is my writing sanctuary,” Burke shares. “This is by far the best chapter of my own life.”

Known best to friends and family as the “queen of reinvention,” Burke recently put a longtime career in real estate behind her in favor of a life not only as an equestrian, but also an author. Her debut novel Friendly Betrayal tells the story of Sabrina, a devoted wife and loyal friend who finds herself at a crossroads when she is drawn into a passionate affair with a handsome stranger—a man who was meant to be her best friend Caroline’s new love interest.

“I was driving home back to Barrington from Lake Bluff after a wine night with a friend, and I was just thinking about our conversation about her finding a man, and all of a sudden, I knew I had a story, this story, to write,” she remembers of the backbone of Friendly Betrayal. “I opened up my computer and I sat down and I wrote, and I wrote, and I wrote. And for some reason it just all came to me—like it was a story I was always meant to tell.”

It was also a story that hit close to home for Burke.

“Life isn’t all about white picket fences,” she says quietly. “Everybody’s got a story. Nothing in life goes that easily. The majority of us are far from perfect.”

But on the outside, life did look perfect for Burke, whose creative career began as a child actress, singing in piano bars on Rush Street at the age of 9. “I did plays and commercials, but it was in this children’s acting class that I took that really sparked my imagination,” remembers Burke, who grew up on the West Side of Chicago. “There was always improvisational time, where we would just get up and make up stories. And I lived for that. I loved it.”

As a teen, Burke loved modeling and going to her English classes in high school and her journalism classes in college—and even had one of her stories published in a Chicago newspaper. But soon, those dreams of writing took a back seat to marriage and kids and the complexities that come with both.

“I was living that life, and I kind of just let everything else go,” Burke says quietly.

In 2000, Burke divorced.

“When I got married, I was judgmental about divorced people and thought this is never going to be me,” she remembers. “And then, one day I woke up and I was like, ‘This isn’t working. I need to move on.’”

So, she did. And soon after she did, Burke says she found herself looking at the world around her very differently.

“I remember one day, I was sitting on the deck and noticed that a robin had built a nest back there in a honeysuckle bush,” she recalls of a time shortly after her divorce. “I watched her lay eggs and have babies, and one by one, I watched them leave the nest.”

It was a similar story to the one Burke says she found herself living at the time, as her children too were finding their own ways in their own lives. So, she wrote a story about it. And with that, her love of writing returned.

“My resilience has gotten me through a lot of things that I have faced,” Burke explains. “I’ve always told my children—when you hit a wall, bounce. Because life is going to throw a lot at you, and you’ve got to go with it. Nothing is forever. Even the bad times are going to pass.”

Today, the 63-year-old finds herself remarried to her high school sweetheart and loving on her horses and writing a much-anticipated sequel to Friendly Betrayal called Call to Forgive. But at the very same time, as she now finds herself surrounded by five horses, three chickens, three dogs, and one cat, Burke admits that she often wonders aloud if she can truly make it as a self-published author in this overly connected world.

“I still have moments where I doubt myself,” she concludes. “There was a time when I had imposter syndrome big time. But that feeling passed, and I now feel comfortable saying ‘I wrote a book and I am an author.’ I think the universe has put all these pieces for me together in the third trimester of my life, and it’s the best feeling in the whole world to finally be settled.”