Where the Road Bends

In this sweet romance from Fordham (A Lady in Attendance), a young woman falls in love with a down-and-out stranger in 1880s small-town Iowa. Norah King has strived to maintain her family’s farm after her father’s death a year ago, but his gambling habit left her with few friends, and the bank’s threats to call in her father’s loan test her optimism. When Jake Granger, a middle-aged farmer 20 years Norah’s senior, offers to marry her and take on her debt, she says yes. Days before the wedding, Norah discovers a severely injured man on her farm and takes him in. She helps the man, Quincy, recover from wounds sustained after being roughed up for throwing a boxing match and instills in him the transformative power of God. The two bond, but Quincy, destitute and aimless, feels she’s better off with Jake and hits the road. Two years later, Quincy has opened a successful hotel and decides to reunite with Norah, unaware of the dire consequences that aiding him has wrought on her life. Norah and Quincy’s Dickensian reversal of fortune lends the story a satisfying narrative symmetry, and the resolution’s testament to the healing power of Christian forgiveness might inspire a tear or two. The strong central couple make this a road worth travelling. (June)