Cabin - Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine

Through the Darkness is the story of the author’s childhood on a rural North Dakota farm, shadowed by her father’s suffering from mental illness. The book follows the author as she leaves the farm for school, and then marries and moves to urban California. There were happy and stressful years in California as the author and her husband raise a family of four children. Over time, they are faced with the growing realization that their eldest son is having more than normal difficulties. His diagnosis of schizophrenia shattered the family, and the book goes on to chronicle the ensuing years of grief and eventual coming to terms with the loss of the son to mental illness. The book is a testimony to the resilience of the human spirit. A “must read” for anyone with mental illness in the family.

Beth Cardall has a secret. For eighteen years, she has had no choice but to keep it to herself, but on Christmas Eve 2008, all that is about to change.

For Beth, 1989 was a year marked by tragedy. Her life was falling apart: her six-year-old daughter, Charlotte, was suffering from an unidentifiable illness; her marriage transformed from a seemingly happy and loving relationship to one full of betrayal and pain; her job at the dry cleaners was increasingly at risk; and she had lost any ability to trust, to hope, or to believe in herself. Then, on Christmas Day, as she rushed through a blizzard to the nearest 7-Eleven, Beth encountered Matthew, a strikingly handsome, mysterious stranger, who would single-handedly change the course of her life.

Who is this man, and how does he seem to know so much about her? He pursues her relentlessly, and only after she’s fallen deeply in love with him does she learn his incredible secret, changing the world as she knows it, as well as her own destiny.

When Jerry Chambers, a young coastal patrol pilot during World War II, is accused of mistakenly sinking a British submarine he is reprimanded and sent to a remote posting to test an experimental new bomb, a dangerous mission far away from the woman he loves. While Jerry risks his life, his sweetheart Mona sets about trying to clear her lover's name before it is too late.