Rope and the Floor

Nathan Cruz used to have the answers.For nine years, he led people into the Catholic faith, one nervous class at a time—until his wife's death took eighteen months to arrive and took his certainty with it. Now he sits in the back pew, if he goes at all, and lets his grandmother believe he's fine.Then his sixteen-year-old niece Josie shows up on his porch, caught in the middle of her parents' unraveling marriage. Then Mara walks back into his life—the woman he loved twenty years ago, now a hospice nurse who left the Church the same way he's leaving it: quietly, and for reasons that don't have easy answers. And then his grandmother, the one person whose faith never seemed to waver, is given a diagnosis that will test every word she ever taught him.Across one unraveling year, Nathan will learn that faith was never meant to be solid ground beneath your feet. Sometimes it's a rope—something you hold onto while the floor gives way, gripped a little tighter each time you're honest enough to admit you're still afraid.Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.