Publisher's Synopsis
Fate Steps In Following his return stateside from Iraq, former Marine medic, Trace Conner, is fearful of reacting violently each time he experiences a wartime flashback has chosen to live in virtual isolation in a primitive cabin, perched on a West Virginia mountainside. Trace discovers an empty vehicle burning in a deep ravine, but finds a child, thrown clear of the wreckage, but with no means of contacting outside help, he carries the unconscious boy back to his cabin. While treating the injured body, Trace learns the child is deaf, which causes him to rethink his obligation to turn him over to authorities. Fearing the unidentified child would be dumped into foster care, where he'd spent his own miserable childhood, Trace decides on a drastic course of action, and seeks help from Granny Shadwell, and her guard dog, Prissy, before beginning his search for the child's relatives. A desperate mother, Keele Tamorra, has reported her son missing. While fighting her own battle with breast cancer, she clings to the hope that her five-year-old son is still alive, somewhere. Hours past without word, but after receiving a mysterious phone call from a stranger, saying that he is caring for her injured son, she ignores personal danger, and agrees to meet her son's professed rescuer. An unidentified burn patient, under the care of plastic surgeon, Doctor Stone Cameron, struggles to remember his past. The doctor, too, is trying to reconcile his past by returning to the poverty-ridden place of his birth to practice his specialty; hoping to find a place to belong. After returning from Afghanistan, former detonation expert, Sarah Chambers, has found a safe place to hide her body's physical scars from pitying eyes. For two years, the walls of her home and studio have not only displayed her powerful paintings, but have also provided a place to hide from life. Working in Granny Shadwell's general store, Sarah hopes to repay her grandmother for raising her, and although she stays out of sight, repaying that debt has become the only motivation to leave her sanctuary. These lonely people are swept up in circumstances that, only by resolving individual issues of trust, will each of them successfully play the hand of cards...Fate dealt...and perhaps win the game.
