Not everyone who comes to New York City in the 1980s wants to, and so it is for Cassandra, forced to leave her mother, sisters and Ecuador for an arranged marriage, prompting Rafael to risk his life following the only woman to ever love him.

In mountainous Ecuador, Cassandra, the youngest of seven children, lives happily in a one-room house with no plumbing or electricity—only the light and love of her widowed mother. Across the field, Rafael, the youngest of thirteen children, plows, plants and tends to farm animals in tattered, dirty clothes. Unlike his dour family, he has a sunny disposition evidenced by the wide smile directed at Cassandra on her walks home from school.

At the local bodega he introduces himself, and buys her a soda. Gossip reaches Cassandra’s godfather who forbids her from seeing Rafael, who, he says, “comes from a bad seed.” Strong-willed, she refuses and upon graduation is sent to New York City to marry her godfather’s nephew. Rafael vows to follow and pays a human smuggler for the life-threatening journey. He stows away on cargo planes, walks through the Mexican desert and hides inside cross-country trailers, arriving only to be beaten and hospitalized.

Catherine, a student nurse fluent in Spanish with a gentle, healing spirit, cares for him and befriends the couple. Shortly afterwards, Rafael is caught by Immigration Services and disappears. Cassandra’s only hope is Catherine, her “Guardian Angel,” who, she believes, has the power to bring him back.

Miss Deeds takes readers on a trail ride into Wyoming’s Wind River wilderness. Dr. Ryan Parker, a Clinical Psychologist and former Army Lieutenant, has ridden 80 miles over three days. In a wildflower meadow at 8,000 feet, rifle shots from a plane pierce the solitude, wounding him and dropping his horse.

Six months earlier, Lucky, Wyoming was recording minus-30 degrees, and three of Parker’s patients figuratively caused the temperature to rise. A schizophrenic, a registered nurse and a rodeo bronc rider’s stories converge during therapy, pointing to a clandestine inter-mountain crime ring dead set against being uncovered.

Ryan Parker finds himself in the crosshairs and will need his former combat experience and clinical skills to stay alive and expose the enemy in the shadows.

Iron Will is a story about resolve. Will Casey, an eight-year-old, assumes the “little man of the house” after his mother, Nell, gives birth to her third child. Will’s father deserted the family months before. Rural Maine in the winter of 1948 was snowbound and bitterly cold. Nell Casey is flat broke and can’t pay the rent for the rustic cabin the Caseys live in. Maine’s Family Services place Will and his older sister with foster homes while the newborn baby girl is given up for adoption. There are no alternatives.

Undeterred, young Will Casey’s determination to reunite his family spans a decade of hardships and setbacks, ultimately bringing him to New York City as an Ironworker apprentice. Walking on four-inch-wide beams sixty stories in the air he exhibits skills, courage and pride, while on the street he wrestles with issues of abandonment and reconciliation.

Eddie & Antoinette rewinds to the mid-1950s when the New York Yankees had baseball fans mesmerized by the world champions in pin stripes. Twenty miles north, a youngster, Eddie Del Merico, is playing out his dream of pitching for the Bronx Bombers by hurling shutouts in Little League.

Off the field, Eddie’s life is less than sterling, harboring a secret causing him to aggressively act out. In a family of often comical and usually dysfunctional members, only Eddie’s grandmother, Antoinette, has the wisdom and caring to relieve his burden.