In Her Keeping

In a North Carolina tiger sanctuary, she found new love and a new purpose.

Sylvia Holt has lost her dream of the perfect suburban Atlanta life—via infertility, a painfully failed adoption, and a husband who’s cheating on her with a younger woman. Her divorce leads her to a North Carolina vacation home, where she settles in with no other goals than to become a sad recluse. But then her next-door neighbor, Ethan Montgomery, lures her into the amazing world of his tiger sanctuary.

Sylvia slowly heals, and her bond with Ethan and the tigers—many of them rescued from abuse and neglect—turns her into a fierce advocate for the big cats. She and Ethan battle a sinister dealer in black-market potions made from tiger parts. Sylvia’s maternal instincts kick in even more with the rescue of a tigress and her tiny cub. Despite challenges, threats, and doubts, Sylvia and Ethan forge ahead, falling in love and working against all odds to secure a future for the endangered cats they adore.

Valerie Joan Connors is the Michigan-born daughter of an artist and a musician. In addition to her career as the operations manager for an architecture, engineering, and design firm, she makes time for her true passion, writing. She is the 2013 president of the century-old Atlanta (Georgia) Writer’s Club. IN HER KEEPING is her first published novel.