Tangled Roots, a novel by Jessica Brodie

Christian Women’s Contemporary Fiction

Tiff has spent her entire adult life running from her past. Now all her dreams are coming true—until she finds out her older brother is getting released from prison. Only, that brother is a secret she’s concealed from everyone, including her fiancé.

Tiff Steadman thought she was escaping her past when she got a college scholarship and moved far from the dilapidated mill town of her youth. For seven years she’s had little contact with her alcoholic parents, her convicted-felon older brother, and the rest of her dysfunctional family. Safe in Dahlia, she’s been free to remake her life and start over. After all, no one knows her as one of those no-good Steadmans, and she has a great job and promising future as news editor of the Dahlia Weekly. When her upstanding boyfriend, Bobby Smathers, proposes, Tiff thinks she finally has a shot at the kind of wholesome Christian life she’s always wanted.

But Tiff never bargained on her past coming face-to-face with her future. For just as she begins to make wedding plans, she gets word that her brother has been released from prison—and his parole officer wants him to join Tiff in Dahlia.

But Tiff hasn’t told anyone, including her fiancé, about her past—or about her brother. Nor has she forgiven her brother for the wrongs he’s done, or for abandoning her to survive the chaos of their family alone. And she can’t believe her brother really has become a born-again Christian and wants to turn his life around, despite his letters and his pleas.

She’s also not convinced that she herself won’t repeat the cycle her family started.

Can Tiff find the courage to move beyond her upbringing and embrace the new creation she’s becoming—and at the same time open her heart to her brother?

Tangled Roots is in the proposal phase being circulated to publishers by her agent, Bob Hostetler of The Steve Laube Agency.