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In my other career, I'm an elementary school teacher. Some years ago my principal asked me to remain in the hallway after school for a few minutes. Social Services was on the way to pick up three of our students. My job was to meet the case worker and direct her to the office. As long as I live, I will remember the scene inside that room. Three children, one stoic and resigned, one furious and fighting, and the last one silently crying are imprinted on my memory forever. I've never been able to forget them. I've often wondered what happened to them, where they are now. They haunted me until the only way I could find closure was to create a story for each one, and of course, to give them the happy endings every child deserves.

I'm so pleased to bring this heartfelt series to you. I hope you fall in love with each one of "my boys" in THE BROTHERS' BOND.

A VERY SPECIAL DELIVERY

The idea for this book first came to me out of the blue several years ago. At the time I had never met anyone who had lost a child to SIDS. Then a terrible thing happened. I had written the first chapter and was fiddling with the rest of the plot when my niece's baby boy suddenly died in his sleep, a tiny victim to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. The pain for the entire family was so excruciating that I felt it inappropriate to finish the story at that time. I put it away only to come back to it recently. The resulting book in no way resembles the experience of my own family other than the terrible feeling of shock and loss and grief. And, of course, of the healing that only God can bring in such a tragedy.

BEAUTY FOR ASHES

From the Barbour anthology LESSONS OF THE HEART

BEAUTY FOR ASHES was one of those stories that hung around inside my head for years before coming to life on the page. During my nursing career I worked with a lovely, young RN who was married to her high school sweetheart. They longed for a baby to complete their happy home, but my friend was diagnosed with uterine cancer and lost her ability to ever bear a child of her own. Even though she regained her health and was cancer free, adoption agencies considered her a bad risk because of her medical history. So, she never had a child, naturally or by adoption, and her heart was broken because of it.

For years, her story haunted me, tormented me. I know how much my children mean to me. Finally, I realized that, while I could never solve the problem in real life, I could create a happy ending for a fictional character who faced the same heartache. And that's exactly what I did. The result was the very personally satisfying story of Amy and Garret in BEAUTY FOR ASHES.

SAVED BY THE BABY

Cancer is a scary disease to most of us. When that disease invades a child, it seems especially abhorrent and obscene. When I first considered writing MIRACLE FOR MEGAN, which was later renamed SAVED BY THE BABY, the idea was entirely from my own imagination. But almost as soon as I started the book, my daughter told me about some friends of hers whose adopted son was waiting for a bone marrow transplant. Sam's problem was unique. Adopted from Latvia, his chance of finding a matching donor was very slim. His parents even went to Latvia in a futile search for relatives who might provide the gift of bone marrow to their son.

Hearing Sam's story set me to thinking about minority children in general. I live in Oklahoma, a state with a large population of Native Americans, and yet the bone marrow registry is woefully short of donors for, not only Indians, but all minorities.

SAVED BY THE BABY tells the story of one mother's desperate attempt to save her daughter's life. And while this book is a category romance, intended for entertainment, I hope it also touches hearts and increases interest in bone marrow and stem cell donation so that more children may beat the deadly disease of cancer.

By the way, little Sam finally found a donor. Though he suffered with graft vs. host disease and a number of other complications from not having a close relative donor, he continues to thrive nearly two years after the transplant that saved his life. This time, real life had a happy ending too!