The Hope of Becoming

He’s the last person she wants to see again. Unfortunately, she's about to see him every day.

Zoe and Lewis's first meeting was a speed-dating disaster.

Within minutes, they had managed to offend each other, and both left convinced they were opposites in every way.

Then they ended up living in the same small town.

For years, Lewis and Zoe avoided each other whenever possible, sidestepped their friends' attempts to set them up, and stubbornly held onto their assumptions about who the other person was.

Until the spring of 2020, and the emergence of the coronavirus.

When psychologist Zoe is asked to move onto Lewis's farm to help a refugee woman struggling with trauma during the uncertainty of the lockdowns, she can't refuse.

Instead, she finds herself eating dinner across from Lewis, talking, laughing, and sharing daily life with the one man she has avoided for years.

As the months pass, Zoe and Lewis learn about the dangers of assumptions, growing close, maybe too close.

Then the pandemic ends, and life moves on.

Three years later, a crisis with Juliana brings Zoe back to the farm—and back to Lewis.

As long-buried feelings resurface, Zoe must confront a question she has spent years avoiding: what if the life she thought she wanted isn't the life she truly needs?

Note from the author: I have always loved romance, and I think love stories are so beautiful. I also love the picture of the small town as a kind of landscape for community. I wanted to write something that reflected the kinds of people I have known all my life. So that is why I wrote about Aveline, a small town that is like the life I have known, with quirky, real, lovable characters who come from many backgrounds and ways of life. Community, brokenness, kindness, and the kingdom of God in action. Isn’t it amazing, how vulnerable we all are? And then we offer food and friendship in the context of houses and cafés and forests… we extend our hands to one another and become family.

© 2026 Small Seed Press (E-bog): 6610001294502

Udgivelsesdato

E-bog: 12. juni 2026