Jude Calohan has been keeping his head down for years. In the quiet town of Bower Bliss, Texas, he has tried to be a good man, a good father, tried not to think too much about his relationship with his own father ... and yet despite this, in the gentle autumn of an uneventful year, Jude Calohan soon finds his relationship with both his eldest child and his own identity as a father called into question.<br><br>Amidst the sleepy apple groves of small town America, will Jude Calohan be able to keep his family together while his eldest child Charlie discovers the confidence to make one of the biggest choices of their young life?

Love Among Strangers

“Nirvana, huh? I had that record when I was maybe a couple of years older than you. Back when it came out, I mean.” A couple of years was an exaggeration, but, for the sake of getting some kind of response, Jude didn’t feel that he had to labor the point. “I remember when that Cobain kid shot himself too.”


Again, he grimaced, firstly because he again realized he had probably said the wrong thing, and secondly, because it felt weird calling Kurt Cobain a kid, when, whilst he had been young, he had seen the man as someone to look up to.


It’s weird, he thought, what getting older, what having kids does to you; it’s weird looking back at the past, at people who were in bands, who were on the television, who now seemed so much younger than you.


“Yeah,” Charlie muttered, but offered no other sign of interest.


Placing his hands on his knees, Jude moved from the bed, crouching, and looking at the storage box underneath the desk.


“Let’s see what you’ve got, shall we?”


Chapter 5