Night Blindness

One October night, when Jensen Reilly is sixteen, she and her high school sweetheart, Ryder, are involved in a horrible accident that kills her brother, Will. Ever since then Jensen has been running—from her past, from the Connecticut shoreline home she loved, to boarding school and then out west, where she dropped out of college to elope with her professor, a charismatic artist who takes her further from the unbearable secret that weighs her down.

But when Jensen's lovable father, Sterling, is diagnosed with a brain tumor, she returns to her childhood home for her first extended visit in thirteen years, and the memories of her old life come flooding back—as do the people she's tried to escape. Torn between the life she's created in Sante Fe with her free-spirited husband, Nic, and the realization that it is time to face her past, Jensen must make a terrifying decision that threatens to change her life forever.

Set against the steamy background of a New England summer and filled with the intensity of first love, Night Blindness is about risk and redemption, the sanctity of unbreakable friendships, and the ways we are hunted down by what we try to escape. Told with heart and humor and the sort of plot destined to keep readers turning pages late at night, this remarkable debut marks the start of a talented career for Susan Strecker.

SUSAN STRECKER holds a B.A. from Drew University and a Masters of Marriage and Family Therapy from Southern Connecticut State University. She practiced in the field of adolescent drug and alcohol addiction. For ten years she ran a multi-venue motorsports park in Florida, taking over the business after her father's death. In 2008 she sold it to be home with her family and began writing. Strecker resides in Essex, Connecticut, with her husband and two children. Night Blindness is her first novel.