A Brother's Duty

Lucinda Wilkinson needed help. Pregnant by a soldier who didn’t remember her, disowned by her mother the respected doctor, and turfed from her Ph.D. program when her draft thesis was stolen by her advisor, Lucy returns to the only place she felt at home – a sagging travel trailer on the old family farmstead near Rideau Ferry in Ontario.

John MacLeish thought he had his future all planned. His older brother Rob would retire from the Army with his twenty year pension and join him in his masonry and construction business. He would look for a sweet modest Christian woman to begin a family with him in the six bedroom stone house he’d lovingly restored and then his life would be complete.

It began to fall apart when Rob told him about Nick, one of the men in his command who had been killed by a Taliban sniper. On his death bed, Nick remembered that Lucinda was Cindi and made Rob promise to look after Cindi. Rob, spooked by Nick’s death, makes John promise to keep Rob’s promise if Rob doesn’t make it back and John reluctantly agrees.Then Rob was killed by a roadside bomb and, in the middle of his grief, John has to find Lucy.

The first meeting doesn’t go well. Lucy has too many tattoos and too much extra jewellery for John’s comfort and his prejudices won’t let him look past the lip ring to the woman in need. Lucy’s prejudices see only a strict and self-righteous man who obeys all of the Christian rules but has no spirit of grace and she refuses to be anyone’s obligation

.

But Lucy’s haunted eyes and John’s promise convince him that he needs to try again, that he has a duty, a brother’s duty.