Book excerpt: This is the story of Will Rawlins, a gifted physician and scientist derailed by his passion for an enigmatic young woman who wields her sensuality as a weapon. Damaged and directionless, he drifts southward into Mexico, where he is forced to flee prosecution for a crime not of his own doing. Set largely in Sonoran Mexico, Baja California, and the strange, deep sea that divides them, The Heart’s Hard Turning is a story of loyalty and betrayal, despair and courage, friendship and death; a story of a deliverance from evil; and, ultimately, a story of our struggle to learn where to love and whom.