All In One Place

She hitchhikes into Holmes Crossing with a backpack, worn boots, and a past she has spent years outrunning.Terra Froese has perfected the art of moving on. Raised in the unsteady current of foster care, abandoned by a mother who chose the bottle over her daughters, Terra learned early that the safest thing to do is keep moving and keep laughing, because if you slow down, the grief catches up. She is sharp and funny and fiercely protective of the people she loves. And she is very, very good at making sure no one gets close enough to see the rest.Holmes Crossing was only supposed to be a stop. A place to hide out at her sister Leslie's while the dust settled. She was not supposed to stay. She was certainly not supposed to fall into the orbit of Corporal Jack DeWindt - steady, principled, and patient in ways Terra doesn't know what to do with.But then a young woman in trouble crosses her path, and Terra does what she always does: she steps in. Because she knows what it costs to be alone when everything falls apart. She knows it from the inside.What she hasn't told Jack - what she hasn't told anyone - is the weight she has been carrying since she was sixteen. The losses that compounded into a grief she never let herself properly mourn. The shame that whispered she was too broken to deserve something whole and good.All in One Place is a story about what it means to finally stop running. It doesn't flinch from the places faith has to go to find a woman who doesn't think she qualifies - and it doesn't offer easy absolution. It offers something truer: the staggering, unearned grace of being known and loved anyway.Some people don't need to be fixed. They need to be found.

Pagina's: 292, Paperback, Carolyne Aarsen