What if every life is connected to every other by a single thread?

Under an apple tree, in a small town on the edge of a great lake, something is beginning.

In a house on a hill above an orchard, a broken man stares out his window but doesn’t see the swaying branches or the summer sun. He sees only his wife’s face and feels again the dreadful sense of falling.

Walking between the trees, a recently freed prisoner is learning how to live in the world again when he makes a discovery that will change many lives forever.

Memories haunt Swanton Robey. The horrific accident that killed his young wife has taken all but his life, leaving him a prisoner of his injuries and his heart’s great loss. Floating through his days with dreams of the past and visions of what might have been, Swan watches the world through his high window but never ventures into it, gazing out over the apple orchard he owns but has abandoned, and beyond it, to the great and mysterious lake.

Joseph Geewa has been a prisoner too, for a crime triggered by grief, ordained by fate. Now free after twenty years, he is trying to build a life among the living—an existence of simple beauty, of choices created through the kindness of others. Grace, his niece, is guiding him back to the world, even as she is drawn to Swan’s tragic isolation. Then, an astonishing discovery in Swan’s orchard suddenly forces the two men together and propels them on a journey of rescue and revelation that in turn might set them both free.

In The Widower, lives entwine in the most unexpected ways, bound together by accidents and twists of fate that can forever hold us one to another. Narrated in episodes that seamlessly join the past and present, this is a story about how individual histories influence present lives, about the value of compassion and the power of forgiveness. Weaving threads of love and mystery through every page, Liesel Litzenburger’s spare and lyrical novel follows the lives of unforgettable characters in a profound story of loss and redemption.


From the Hardcover edition.