Holly Goforth (Book One: The Stalking)

Holly Goforth is the coming of age story of a young girl whose privileged boarding school life ends forever with the death and disgrace of her wealthy father. She must return home to support her now destitute family. En route, she is sexually molested by a violent predator. The novel follows the lives of these two people over the next year. With the loss of innocence and the destruction of her sense of entitlement and security, Holly's initiation into adulthood begins. Her responses to the events in her life mature as her knowledge, education, and experience build. Her false view of the world, the last vestige of her pampered life, is corrected by a man, someone she at first calls her professor. Acting together for a common purpose, a source of enormous satisfaction for both of them, they fall in love. They realize what they must do to pursue decent lives and chase happiness together with some realistic hope of achieving it. As Holly’s quest succeeds and her world expands, enabling her to grow, her predator’s quest to find and destroy her becomes even more relentless. Seduced by his own lust, which he blindly confuses with love, he stalks Holly. His quest causes his constricted life to shrink even further.