Resurrecting Randi

A troubled young student demolishes a professor's carefully arranged life in this disturbing yet compelling story of love and loss. Since the death of his daughter, Randi, professor Travis Harrison has built a sheltered life for himself. Only now, things are taking a turn for the better as he is engaged to be married and his first novel is climbing the best-seller lists. Enter 19-year-old redheaded waif-fatale Layla Sommers, who notices Travis giving money to a homeless man and latches onto him as a savior from her chaotic self. Apparently, she has no one else in her life, and in a spectacularly ill-advised move, Travis agrees to take Layla into his home to help her. When it finally dawns on Travis that Layla physically resembles Randi, his deceased daughter, his emotions become even more raw. He is confused by her mixture of sexual come-on and little-girl lost vulnerability and unnerved by his responses. Yet even as things deteriorate to the point of Layla effectively turning his life upside-down, she also produces moments of incredible tenderness, compassion, and love. And above all, she is able to help him see the devastating truth about the death of his daughter, Randi. As Kirkus said about this sterling debut, Lalya mesmerizes with her hair-trigger mood swings and manipulativeness; the fiancee is both a controlling monster and a friend in need; Travis walks the tightrope of propriety while longing to lose his balance and topple over into a world of feeling and desire. With the deeply-etched characters and the many unexpected turns, the reader will find Resurrecting Randi impossible to put down, and the ending impossible to forget.

After his father and brother died young with unfinished manuscripts on their bedside tables, Shepherd found the incentive and the emotion to pen this novel of extraordinary depth, loss, and ultimately, hope. Shepherd lives and writes in Austin with his wife. His second novel is in progress.