Rosemont

When a gas explosion takes her husband and their restaurant in one terrible night, Maria Franks has nothing left to hold onto in San Francisco — and nowhere left to go. So she loads up the last of what her family owns and drives east with her two kids, chasing nothing more than a change of scenery.

What she finds is Rosemont: a half-forgotten town where the porches are swept but the doors don't open, where old-timers pass each other on the sidewalk without a word, and where something happened forty years ago that no one will talk about.

Her ten-year-old daughter, Gracie, isn't interested in staying quiet. Chasing a rumor about a rose garden that once made this town famous, she stumbles into a mystery the whole town has spent four decades trying to bury — a murder, a wrongful accusation, and a secret that has kept neighbors from speaking to each other since 1973.

With nothing but stubborn hope and a handful of garden tools, Gracie sets out to do what grown-ups gave up on long ago: bring Rosemont back to life. But the truth buried beneath those roses is more dangerous than she knows — and digging it up might cost her family everything they came here to find.

A story about grief, second chances, and the quiet, stubborn power of a child who refuses to believe a broken thing can't be made beautiful again.

Todd Stocker is a pastor, church planter, communicator, and writer. His devotionals and articles have been published in Living Magazine, The Lutheran Witness, and Connect Quarterly. A nationally soughtafter communicator and winner of the Rickman Award for Creative Communication, Stocker has been the keynote speaker at youth camps, men's and women's ministry events, and chamber of commerce luncheons. He and his family live in Minnesota.