Into The Light

Does redemption flow in small towns like Three Rivers?


I spent a decade in prison for a crime I didn’t commit.


Before I was released on parole, I was part of a work-release program in a little town in Michigan called Three Rivers. So, when I’m finally paroled, there’s nowhere else I want to be but here in Three Rivers, rebuilding my life from scratch.


I expect life to be hard; it always has been, for me.


What I don’t expect?


Noelle Harper. Short, curvy, gorgeous, and way too sweet and innocent for the likes of me. She's full of light, love, understanding, compassion, and affection—things I know nothing about.


I don’t expect her to crash into the new life I’m building, turn everything upside down, and see things in me I’ve never seen in myself.


I don’t expect her to save me. To see beyond my past and show me how to reach for more—how to love.


* * *


My life has not gone the way I thought it would.


I’m a small-town girl next door, Three Rivers born and raised. I’m a good girl from a conservative home—I didn’t date my high school sweetheart, I courted him…with chaperones. I didn’t so much as hold his hand until we married right out of high school.


I expected to be a pastor’s wife, a mom, and a member of the only community I’ve ever known. I expected my life to be simple and predictable.


What I don’t expect?


To discover that my husband was cheating on me with not one, not two, but three church skanks, while acting like my eager desire for a healthy marital sex life was something I should be ashamed of.


I don’t expect a man like Bear. A veritable mountain of a man with an unlikely name, long red hair, and a giant red beard. A man with a criminal record. A man who sees a side of me no one, not my family, and certainly not my husband ever saw. A man who brings the real Noelle Harper to life.


I never expected to fall in love with a gigantic, quiet, rough-around-the-edges man with a gentle spirit and a misunderstood past.


But in Three Rivers, the unexpected seems to travel faster than the town gossip.