Protector

Trace Coghill’s adopted toddler has been kidnapped, and she cannot endure it. The child had been rejecting her, and her husband was refusing to help. Already close to breaking, Trace feels this harrowing crisis as the final proof of her failure as a mother. She is ready to do something she cannot take back.

But in a final act of grace she makes a deal with the stars:

Take my life.
Do with it what you will.
In exchange, give my child a protector,
stronger than the earth.
A mother or a father — it doesn’t matter.
Take my life and do this for me.

Enter Hector.

Hector is neither mother nor father: they are, in fact, a simple cog in the kidnapping plan.

But somehow Hector will find it within themself to risk everything they hold dear in order to protect this star-crossed child from a terrible fate, drawing reserves of strength they never knew they had and gaining surprising allies as they make their way.

Moving back and forth in time, unfolding piece by piece, spanning the better part of a decade, Protector is a gripping, emotionally resonant novel about the painful and glorious mystery of attachment.