A Letter from the Author

Dear Reader,

I was on a cruise when I learned I had a new contract with Avon Inspire. How neat was that? I was thrilled. I celebrated! I love writing, and was I very excited to get home and start on a new series.

However, God had other plans. When we got off the ship and were in the Ft. Lauderdale airport, I checked our home messages and discovered my mother was in the hospital. She’d been having some heart problems and was disoriented.

Suddenly, everything I thought mattered so much didn’t matter so much at all.

Over the next few weeks, I flew to California, spoke to doctors, and called my brother and sister more than I’d called them in years. Our mom would get better, things would settle down, then one of us would get another phone call and find out she was in the emergency room again. It was a frustrating and very hard time.

Yet, it was also an incredibly meaningful time. I discovered that my siblings and I still had a strong bond that not even years spent living thousands of miles apart could break.

During all of this, I began writing The Caregiver.

Now, looking back on those weeks, I have to smile. It was so obvious that God was right there with me! He helped me craft what I’d originally planned to be a somewhat light, upbeat story into a novel far more meaningful.

He helped me with Lucy’s character, too, as I imagined what kind of a woman would leave her family, travel to another state, and volunteer to care for someone going through chemotherapy. At first, I was sure that woman would have to be an independent, incredibly strong woman.

But then I started thinking about Lucy some more. I started asking questions, too. What if she wasn’t very strong? Or even better, what if she was stronger than she ever imagined she was? A woman like that, I decided, would make a great heroine. A woman like that was Lucy Troyer.

I hope you enjoyed Lucy’s journey to Jacob’s Crossing, her romance with Calvin Weaver, and her calling to become the type of person she was meant to be.

I hope you’ll continue with the series as the people of Jacob’s Crossing have even more adventures. I promise, Calvin’s Uncle John is about to go on quite an emotional roller coaster, as does the rest of the Weaver family. Even little five-year-old Katie has some growing pains!

Finally, if you’ve ever smiled at the grocery-store clerk when you were sad, happily volunteered when you really wanted to cry, or said you were “just fine” when maybe you weren’t “just fine” at all . . . this book is for you. God bless you.

With my thanks,

Shelley Shepard Gray

PS: To everyone who’s asked your library to carry my books, thank you! To all the librarians who’ve recommended my novels and asked me to speak at their libraries, thank you, too. I’m really looking forward to visiting and meeting your patrons.

In the meantime, please visit me at www.shelleyshepardgray.com or on Facebook, or write to me at: Shelley Shepard Gray, 10663 Loveland-Madeira Rd. #167, Loveland, Ohio 45140. I’d truly love to hear what you thought of the book.