Before our current home, my husband and I lived in the same house for twenty years. We went from 4000 square feet to 2000. When we decided to move, we still had our daughter’s stroller. It was a mammoth job to give away, throw away, store away. I believed I was done until retirement. Apparently […]
Over thirty years ago, I was still married to my first husband and Brian, our son, was teeny tiny. One Saturday night, we decided to invite his parents over for dinner. We went all out considering our miniscule income: steaks and potatoes with all the trimmings, cheesecake. Thirty minutes before the scheduled arrival, we were […]
Today you are reading my 175th post. Eight years! Who knew I had so much to say? Whether it was interesting or valuable is questionable, but 175! Yikes! Each post is approximately 900 words. I’ve posted 157,500 words. Double Yikes! As I try to decide what next to do with this blog – I mean, […]
“When you lose everyone and everything you love, can you ever live again? Or love again?
An unimaginable trauma. A future that seems impossible. When your world shatters, how do you put it back together? When Matt Nelson found Kathleen on the beach, she’d been hiding behind a scarf and sunglasses for three years. She couldn’t hide her loneliness, and he couldn’t turn away. But when her flashbacks start, they’re both unprepared for the repercussions and the depth of her emotional suffering.
Kathleen agrees to return to intensive trauma recovery at The Charlotte Center, where the sounds and the smells and the images from that terrible night await her, demanding she confront her demons.”
Searing and at times brutal, this beautiful love story is not your mother’s romance novel. In “Journey to Hope,” we continue the story we began with author June Converse’s first installment, “Decide to Hope.” However, this book stands on its own.
Katherine, always supported by Matt, makes the courageous decision to take back her life after it was tragically destroyed. The details are not for the faint of heart but are necessary to understand why Katherine is so damaged.
I cheered Matt and Katherine on as they fought to get the lives they wanted and deserved. During these times, when we all need reasons to hope, this is the book to read.
I very rarely choose this genre, but I loved every moment of “Journey to Hope.” Be forewarned, this book will keep you up way past your bedtime until you finish every last page.
A great read that has it all. A beautiful beach, a mysterious women, a horrific crime, and the capacity of the human heart to love despite tragedy.
How does one survive a tragedy beyond imagination? How do we recover from guilt? How do we rebuilt our life after trauma? How can we best help our loved ones heal? What binds two people together no matter what? June Converse deals expertly with each of these questions in her second novel Journey to Hope.
Her characters work their way through an emotional terrain that most of us never enter. Yet as a trauma survivor myself, I found comfort in the gentle way Converse deals with them and us, her readers. I felt myself in Kathleen and my partner in Matt.
Journey to Hope is raw and real and helps us to see that regardless of our past, there is always hope for our future. Thank you for the reminder.
Copyright 2023 June Converse, All Rights Reserved.
