title: Dreaming of a Father's Love: A Tale From the Ohio Valley
author:  Sharon A. Lavy 
description: "Family is a prominent theme of this novel set in the Ohio Valley. Here three young women struggle to keep the families that they have always wanted and to earn the love they crave in their conservative environments. Sharon Lavy lives in southwest Ohio where she is known in writing circles as 'the German Baptist lady'."<br /><br />
zlib_text: 
  
  
  
  
  
  ![Borealis](images/cover.png)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  1
  
  
  Twelve years ago, a man named Bodine checked into a Las Vegas motel under the
  name Thomas Hudson with a young girl who was of no relation to him. She was a
  pretty little thing, perhaps eight or nine years of age, dressed plainly in a
  simple cotton dress embroidered with tiny red strawberries around the waist.
  To glance casually upon the pair, one would assume they were father and
  daughter. But on closer inspection, anyone with a knack for detail would see
  that the man was no one’s father. Tall, gaunt, haunted—looking at him was like
  staring infinity in the face. With his black, hopeless eyes recessed into deep
  pockets and an air of chronic fatigue surrounding him like a cloud of
  Midwestern dust, this man was no one’s father.
  
  
  “What’s wrong?” the girl said. “Why did we stop?”
  
  
  Bodine’s grip tightened on the Bronco’s steering wheel. The sodium lights from
  the motel fell against the Bronco’s windshield. A light rain had begun to
  fall