Essayons

Hope Krooz left Washington once, and swore she wouldn't go back.

After leaving under circumstances she doesn't discuss, she rebuilt her life on a Montana reservation, doing legal aid work that mattered. For the first time in years, she found something steady, people who trusted her, and a version of herself she could live with.

Three years later, an offer she didn't expect pulls her back to Washington D.C. Assigned to observe a federal flood response, Hope expects a routine trip until she walks into the Emergency Operations Center and meets the man in charge.

Brigadier General Clayton Kindred has spent years carrying losses he doesn't explain. He sees through Hope in a way no one has in a long time. What begins in the chaos of a city on the brink of disaster becomes something neither of them planned, and neither of them can easily walk away from.

Then Hope is called back to her reservation because the women she once represented have been disappearing. No one has stopped it. No one has answered for it. And what she uncovers reaches deeper and closer than she is prepared to face.

Now the life she rebuilt, the man she didn't expect, and the past she tried to leave behind are all on a collision course.

Some stories are about finding love.

This one is about what it costs to hold onto it.