The Cold Line Crosses

A story of betrayals and the pursuit of an unattainable redemption, The Cold Line Crosses follows the lives of three friends - Mark and Dianna Jacobs, and widower Jimmy Young - whose once indelible friendship and peaceful lives in the San Juan Islands are forever changed by the death of the young woman they loved, nineteen-year-old Jessie, Jimmy's only child. Almost a year has passed since Jessie drowned in the icy ocean waters off Depot Island, a year which has seen Mark and Dianna slip deeper into their own separate worlds of despondency and isolation, a year that has witnessed a father's grief turn to anger and seen him, apparently, close the door on his daughter's life and death. Seemingly content to pour his days into work at his beloved Campground, a popular tavern and historic landmark that he owns with Mark and Dianna, and his nights into gambling binges at the tribal casino, Jimmy appears to be the island rock he's always been. But Mark's grief, fueled by a solitary guilt that he may have been responsible for Jessie's decision to enter the ocean waters that fateful October night, has become a defiling obsession. When a group of men known to have ties with a racist organization on the mainland sets up camp on the island during the peak of tourist season, a situation that leads to a violent confrontation with Mark, both Mark and Jimmy must, at last, reveal the knowledge that each has withheld from the other concerning disturbing events that unfolded in Jessie's life during her final days - revelations that will ultimately test one man's faith in beliefs once trusted and push the other towards an irrevocable path of retribution. The author worked for several years as a counselor in a federal halfway house and with troubled juveniles in a residential treatment center. He lives in the Puget Sound with his wife and dogs.