The River Is Always Waiting

"It’s just these dumb labels we stick on people, you know? They’re so pointless. We’re so stupid about sexual desire. We use the same word for attraction as we do for action, mixing them together, making it seem like there is nothing separating the two, no thought, no choice, like we’re just slaves to our desires, just machines, incapable of deciding whether to follow our attractions or reject them."

Forced from their cabin seclusion by a mountain storm, Dana and young Alice must accept help from a man Dana had hoped to never see again, a man she no longer trusts—because she knows what darkness calls to him and to what depths he might fall.

Except, let's be blunt—that's not what this book is really about. For too long the world has claimed that attraction is who we are, neglecting to consider the consequences that such logic invites. And society shifts, backs turned against the virtue of resistance, the world afraid to even imagine a man from whom restraint could be expected.

And so, the pleasant wisdom of the past rejected, it's time to use a less comfortable approach. It's time to meet a man the world has been ignoring, time to face him and his story. It's time for us to realize that everyone, absolutely everyone, can choose to resist.

Attraction is something that you feel, not something that you are.

---

Shall I be less cryptic? Very well. This novel was written to shatter the man-made concept of sexual identity, the morality-destroying construct which claims that our sexual desires are who we are, that they should form the core of our identity, and that because sexual desires form the core of our identity it is therefore wrong to believe that a sexual desire is wrong.

But there is more than one way to look at a situation, and this novel is my attempt to help you see things a different way. I want you to see the separation between a person and their desires. I want you to understand they are two different things.

The strategy is simple: I show you a good man, and I give him a horrible desire. Why did I choose this particular desire? Because I am confident you will want him to resist it. I want you to see—I want you to understand—that he doesn't have to let his wrong desire define him. His attraction is not who he is. I want to show you that sexual identity is a lie. It is not the only way to look at the world. It is not the only way to look at each other. Because here is the truth: It is not our desires that define us, it is our choices that do.

Excerpt from Part Two: Some build bridges

"It's just these dumb labels we stick on people, you know? They're so pointless. We're so stupid about sexual desire. We use the same word for attraction as we do for action, mixing them together, making it seem like there is nothing separating the two, no thought, no choice, like we're just slaves to our desires, just machines, incapable of deciding whether to follow our attractions or reject them."