Faith gives you hope. And when you have hope, you have everything.

That’s what Junia Rousselle finally came to realize. It took her thirty years. In my debut southern fiction novel, Junia tells the story of Scot Marken’s struggle to acclimate to life outside of prison, the family of his murder victim relentless in trying to keep him from uncovering long-buried secrets and lies as he searches for purpose and forgiveness.

For thirty years, Junia has maintained faith that Scot, the boy she raised, would return to her. After being taken by his cruel, mentally-ill father and spending twenty-one years in prison for killing his friend, Scot returns to the small West Virginia community. He had made a promise that was long past needing to be fulfilled. But when he goes to his new job as dishwasher at the restaurant where Junia is a cook, she sees it in his eyes. He’s not really back. To make matters worse, the townspeople are relentless in trying to drive Scot from their community to keep him from uncovering the lies surrounding the killing. As Junia continues to struggle with how a merciful and loving God could take a boy from the only mother he’d ever known and put him in a life filled with suffering, Scot struggles to find purpose and acclimate to life on the outside. After losing one of the last people he thinks he has in this world in a hostile encounter with the townspeople, Scot must risk his freedom—and possibly even his own life—to uncover the truth. Or else, as Junia tells him, he’ll always be imprisoned within the bars in his own head.