The Boy From The River

Twenty-year-old Johannes expected to die at dawn.

Captured behind enemy lines in the final days of World War II, the young German sniper is tied to an execution post, waiting for the firing squad that will end his short, brutal life. Instead, a bolt of lightning changes everything.

When Johannes awakens half-drowned on the banks of the Ohio River, he has no idea where-or when-he is. Rescued by Lily, a horse-loving editor with a weakness for helping anything lost or injured, he finds himself in a world beyond imagination.

With nowhere to go and no way home, Johannes is taken in by Lily's family. Her practical, unflappable father, Heinrich, seems to accept that German boys occasionally fall out of storms. Her mother quietly feeds him, watches over him, and somehow makes the impossible feel ordinary. As the days pass, Johannes discovers that the greatest miracle of the twenty-first century isn't progress-it's the chance to belong.

Lily doesn't expect to be jealous of her own father for the amount of time he spends with Johannes as they work on projects together. And she surely doesn't expect Johannes to proclaim that he could write a better romance than the bestseller she's reading-and then set out to prove it. Most of all, she doesn't expect to fall in love with a frightened young man who expected history to end his life, and instead finds himself becoming part of a family that never knew it was missing a son.