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

Everything, he reflected on the school, was designed to elicit nostalgia. Nothing about the school had changed since the seventies, he guessed, except maybe the secretary. Heck, he hoped she hadn’t been a former student, he thought as he passed and reached for the door. He’d hate to think of anyone being forced to work in their old high school.


The wooden door of the office noisily opened as he reached for it, and the shape of the school’s principal, Mr. Abe, straight-backed and bespectacled, blocked his path, silencing the disparate thoughts rattling about in his head.


They waited like that for a moment, the teacher unwilling to let him in and Jude refusing to go.


“You better come in then,” the other man said eventually, as if their confrontation had been verbal.


Chapter 7