Book excerpt: When you've been brought to your knees, once you're able to stand again, where do you go? In a Boulder's Shadow begins a week into the New Year. A college baseball player kneels in the snow on a Chicago sidewalk, staring at the bodies of his friend and an eleven-year-old boy. Knowing his failed attempt to rescue the child from a gang initiation led to their deaths, he begins roaming aimlessly until he meets another wanderer holding fast to her own dark secret from a distant war. In a Boulder's Shadow chronicles the journeys of four characters from different walks of life, trying to escape the guilt of a deadly mistake, a war, a school shooting, and a rejected marriage proposal. Knocked to their knees by their circumstances, they are drawn to the same woodland camp in northeastern Pennsylvania where a mysterious boulder awaits in the woods. Coming together in the shadow of the boulder to coach, play, and heal, these mentors, teachers, and counselors soon find they must fight to prevent the boulder's destruction. As the camp owner faces the possibility of losing his family name and lands passed down from his great-grandfather, decades-old antagonisms between the owner, the caretaker, and a local handyman are stoked in the heat of summer by the greed of a real estate developer. All leads to a final choice: let the boulder be destroyed or unite and risk everything to save it.