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To Echo and Remain: A Love Story

Some spend a lifetime looking for love, and others wait a lifetime to be reunited with someone once so deeply loved. To Echo and Remain is a contemporary romance with a historical backstory about a lover’s promise and a lasting bond that even death cannot put asunder. Set primarily in an old inn in the mountains of North Carolina, To Echo and Remain explores the power of love, forgiveness, and second chances. These valuable lessons are learned as the long-held secrets of Ruth Fischer, the elderly innkeeper, finally come to light. Owen Montgomery, a young attorney living in Atlanta, and Nicole Fischer, his girlfriend, are hindered in their quest for love by the scars of their pasts. They struggle to keep their cobbled-together relationship from falling apart. At a time when Owen and Nicole’s relationship is most vulnerable, Owen’s former fiancée, Quinn, suddenly reappears and fuels the anger and self-doubt that have driven Owen since their breakup. When faced with keeping promises to Nicole or proving to all that he is a more capable lawyer than he is given credit for, Owen comes home to tell Nicole that he cannot go with her to visit her grandmother during a long holiday weekend. The fact that he must face Quinn as opposing council raises Nicole’s suspicions and Owen’s mother’s hopes that he will return to his former lover. Owen represents the elderly homeowners of a small minority neighborhood barely surviving in the shadows of the growing city of Atlanta. He struggles to save a stand of trees that a greedy developer threatens. Nicole, a woman tough as nails on the outside but lost and fearful within, keeps Owen at a safe emotional and physical distance. Haunted by the harsh words of her deceased and embittered mother, who never recovered from a failed love, Nicole sees herself fulfilling the tradition of her mother and grandmother, fiercely guarding her heart and living according to her own terms, never compromising herself in the name of love. Traveling alone, Nicole turns to her grandmother, Ruth Fischer, for comfort and advice. Ruth surprises Nicole with the secret details about a long-ago affair that resulted in the birth of her only child. Shocked to learn that she has misunderstood her grandmother all along, Nicole begins to learn a lesson or two about overcoming the obstacles life throws in one’s way, finding hope and offering forgiveness, and falling in love for all the right reasons. Owen eventually travels to the inn to save his relationship with Nicole. There, he hears Ruth's story about her lover, killed tragically decades earlier, and their roles in founding the Joyce Kilmer National Forest. Owen and Nicole also learn about Buck, a majestic deer, Ruth’s companion, whenever she makes her way to the very spot beneath the trees where Nicole’s mother was conceived. To Echo and Remain is a southern tale set in an old inn in the Appalachian foothills of western North Carolina. It unfolds against a backstory of the grandmother’s role in founding the Joyce Kilmer National Forest and a few secrets she had kept that, when finally told, changed Owen and Nicole’s lives forever.