A Watershed Year - Softcover

What it means to be a mother, what it takes to save a life.

Lucy never confessed her love to her best friend, Harlan, before he passed away. Two months after his funeral, she is haunted by the power of things left unsaid. But then she receives the first of his e-mails arranged to be sent after his death. So begins the year that everything changes—Lucy’s watershed year.

In an e-mail, Harlan says something that consumes her: he’s certain Lucy is destined for motherhood. In her grief, she suddenly rediscovers hope, journeying to Russia to adopt a four-year-old boy. When she meets her son, Mat, for the first time, she realizes he’s also mending a wounded heart and is just as lost as she is. Together, they learn to trust, each helping the other to heal.

But just as they’re welcoming their new normal, Mat’s father comes to America to reclaim his son and reveals the truth about Mat’s past that might shatter Lucy’s fragile little family forever.

Susan Schoenberger’s breathtaking and powerful story of love, loss, redemption, and what it means to be a mother will leave you in awe as Lucy, in the depths of her greatest despair, somehow finds her greatest joy and embraces the beauty of second chances.

Susan Schoenberger is a writer and editor who lives in West Hartford, Connecticut, with her husband and three (almost-grown) children. A Watershed Year, which won the gold medal in the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition, is her first novel. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Inkwell, Village Rambler, and Bartlebysnopes.com, among others. A longtime journalist, Susan has worked for the Baltimore Sun, the Hartford Courant, and many other newspapers and online publications. Please visit her website at susanschoenberger.com and follow her on Twitter @schoenwriter.