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

“And that was really as far as I got before I came over,” Sally Schmidt confessed, “but I wanted to say, hi, I’m Sally, I see you guys about but we never really talk…and I’d like to change that.”


Ayesha Swanson stood still for a moment, thinking again of her childhood, of her adolescence, of meeting Mister Mo, and of that realization of how good it felt to trust other people, to believe that not everyone was out there to hurt her, and, surprising herself, she smiled.


“Hi,” she said softly in her lilting, accented English, “I’d like to change that too.”


Sally beamed in reply, and behind them, the sun set in gorgeous gold across Bower Bliss’s quiet streets and apple orchards.9


The radio whispered softly as they hit the freeway, Jude Calohan at the wheel, his wife in the passenger seat looking fretful and concerned, dressed smartly in black, a line of pearls about her neck, her handbag in her lap.


Chapter 33