Shawn Smucker

When Paul Elias receives a terminal diagnosis, he leaves his physician's office in a fog. Only one thing is clear to him: If he is going to die, he must find someone to watch over his granddaughter, Pearl, who has been in his charge since her drug-addicted father disappeared....

Before Dan opened his door to find a wounded woman who had escaped from the tormentors in the mountain, his life had become rather quiet. But the woman's arrival changes everything....

When Cohen Marah steps over the body of his dead father on a cold spring morning, he steps into a labyrinth of memory. In the week that follows, he must confront his traumatic past, a violent present, and the most frightening question of all did he kill his father....

In 2012, Mohammad fled Syria along with his wife and four sons, escaping to Jordan through the wilderness. Four years later, he sat across from Shawn Smucker in a small room in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Though neither of them knew it, Mohammad had arrived in Shawn's life just in time....

It was the summer of storms and strays and strangers. The summer that lightning struck the big oak tree in the front yard....