Home Another Way

After her mother’s death and her father’s abandonment, tiny infant Sarah Graham was left to be raised by her emotionally distant grandmother. As a child she turned to music for solace and even gained entrance to Julliard. But her potentially brilliant music career ended with an unplanned pregnancy and the stillborn birth of her child.

In an attempt to escape the past, Sarah, now twenty-seven, is living life hard and fast–and she is flat broke. When her estranged father dies, she travels to the tiny mountain hamlet of Jonah, New York to claim her inheritance. Once there, she learns her father’s will stipulates a six-month stay before she can receive the money. Fueled by hate and desperation, Sarah settles in for the bitter mountain winter, and as the weeks pass, she finds her life intertwining with the lives of the simple, gracious townsfolk. Can these strangers teach Sarah how to forgive and find peace?

A story of grace, of God’s never-ceasing love and the sometimes flawed, faithful people He uses to bring His purpose to pass.

HOME ANOTHER WAY Book Trailer, produced by Trailer to the Stars:

EXCERPT: Chapter One

I had twenty-three borrowed dollars in my pocket, and the deed to a house in a town I couldn’t find on any map. How long ago did I stop at that gas station to ask for directions? It seemed like hours. The attendant had pointed to the top of the mountain and said, “Keep going up.”

So I drove until the sun wilted into the horizon, dropping behind rows of shaggy, towering evergreens. Brown leaves skittered across the road; I swerved around them more than once, mistaking them for toads, or chickadees. Deer crossing signs blazed yellow in my headlights around each turn. Snow appeared, as if growing from the ground. The windows began to fog.

I should have turned around days ago, given up this absurd quest for – what? Revenge? Retribution? Whatever it was, a certain romanticism had crept into the ordeal, being on the road, alone, with just my thoughts and a cooler of diet Coke. I always imagined myself the tragic heroine. That, and I had absolutely nowhere else to go.

Squinting, I saw a light ahead, attached to a worn, whale-shaped sign.

THE JONAH INN.

“Cute,” I mumbled, turning into the driveway.

There was a story in the Bible about Jonah. My grandmother, a bit of a religious fanatic, had taken particular delight in giant fish and prophets and the complete stupidity of some guy living three days up to his knees in gastric juices. I must have heard it fifty times. “You see, you must always do what God tells you to do,” she’d say. As a small child, I would nod and agree, and then ask for a cookie. Finally, when I was twelve, I demanded, “What about adultery? What about murder? What does God say about that?”

Grandmother’s eyes had bulged. “Who told you?” “Aunt Ruth,” I said. “Don’t you think God wanted me to know the truth about my parents?”

Grandmother didn’t talk to me about the Bible anymore after that. She stopped talking to Ruth completely.

Lucky Aunt Ruth.

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