We live in a world full of wounded souls. People sometimes seem determined to invent new ways to make one another miserable. Sometimes we wallow in our victimization, leaving ourselves without the emotional resources to find healing. Understanding the hurts we suffer, forgiving those who caused them, and finding the faith to step into the future are all crucial to surviving the past and moving on to a joyful season of life. Blackberry Winter is about that process. Brian McClellan and Emily Stone are two wounded people frozen into the misery of the past. He is a veteran of the Persian Gulf War who lost a hand and a leg. She is the product of an abusive childhood. Neither really understands the dynamic of their own emotional pain. They know only that they live in a perpetual winter. When they find each other, they think they have found happiness, that they are free to explore life as other people live it, together. The couple feels that surely spring has come. But when Emily becomes a victim of sexual assault, they discover that the past holds the key to the present, and that their future hangs on the struggle to to come to terms with suffering. Blackberry Winter is about that struggle. This book is aimed at men and women who have been though times of intense pain, and whose ability to relate to others has been damaged in the process. Brian and Emily are not heroes, but ordinary people whom readers will identify with as their relationship flowers, stalls, grows, faces terrible crisis, and triumphs over it. Blackberry Winter is about that triumph.

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