Shelterbelt — Tricia Bauer

A year ago, Jade Engler's younger brother Benjamin was found beaten to death at the edge of their Paradise, Nebraska, farm. The event tore their family apart: the farm failed; Jade's father, despondent, has taken up with a sugary sweet younger woman; her mother ran off without a word. Jade herself responded by seducing any boy she thought might be responsible for her brother's death. Only recently had she begun to settle down-and now she's discovered she's pregnant. Jade is paralyzed by indecision yet terrified of staying in Paradise. And so, off she goes.From the first leg of her journey, where she works as an au pair to a rich Connecticut family, to a trip back to the Midwest and then onto San Francisco, which she romantically hopes will inspire her the way the same westward journey inspired her great-great-grandmother over a hundred years ago, Jade looks for answers. What she learns has more to do with the accidents along the way, as her mother might have told her: How could one slip of a letter from Jane to Jade be so prophetic? In one of Tricia Bauer's lyrical, heartfelt, even humorous novels, that's the way life goes.Author Bio: Tricia Bauer is also the author of Working Women and Other Stories, Boondocking, and most recently, Hollywood & Hardwood. She, her husband, playwright Bill Bozzone, and daughter live in Connecticut.