A story of betrayals and the pursuit of an unattainable redemption, The Cold Line Crosses follows the lives of three friends - Mark and Dianna Jacobs, and widower Jimmy Young - whose once indelible friendship and peaceful lives in the San Juan Islands are forever changed by the death of the young woman they loved, nineteen-year-old Jessie, Jimmy`s only child. Almost a year has passed since Jessie drowned in the icy ocean waters off Depot Island, a year which has seen Mark and Dianna slip deeper into their own separate worlds of despondency and isolation, a year that has witnessed a father`s grief turn to anger and seen him, apparently, close the door on his daughter`s life and death. Seemingly content to pour his days into work at his beloved Campground, a popular tavern and historic landmark that he owns with Mark and Dianna, and his nights into gambling binges at the tribal casino, Jimmy appears to be the island rock he`s always been. But Mark`s grief, fueled by a solitary guilt that he may have been responsible for Jessie`s decision to enter the ocean waters that fateful October night, has become a defiling obsession. When a group of men known to have ties with a racist organization on the mainland sets up camp on the island during the peak of tourist season, a situation that leads to a violent confrontation with Mark, both Mark and Jimmy must, at last, reveal the knowledge that each has withheld from the other concerning disturbing events that unfolded in Jessie`s life during her final days - revelations that will ultimately test one man`s faith in beliefs once trusted and push the other towards an irrevocable path of retribution. The author worked for several years as a counselor in a federal halfway house and with troubled juveniles in a residential treatment center. He lives in the Puget Sound with his wife and dogs.