We met Donna Shannon in Contingency, as she helped Bobbi work through an episode of depression. Her compassionate wisdom made her a reader favorite, someone we’d like to sip a cup of coffee with and absorb some of her wisdom.
In Touched we get Donna’s backstory. Told in first person, her unique voice and raw emotion reveal her heart and her struggle to make peace with God and with a crime committed against her.
An encounter with evil stole her innocence. It will take an encounter with God to restore her faith.
Secrets come in all sorts and sizes. Sometimes, they are as sweet as an engagement ring in a nervous boy’s pocket. Other times … they threaten to shatter your very self.
With those kinds of secrets, it’s difficult to judge if keeping it or telling it is more damaging. For years, I believed telling my secret was far more dangerous than anything imaginable.
I was wrong.
My daddy was one of the finest men Allen County, Tennessee ever produced. His brother, Hollis, was a devil from hell. I could never bring myself to tell Daddy or Mama the truth about what Hollis had done, and I was sure God counted me just as guilty.
So I carried it inside and never told another living soul. Except for David Lee. Until that summer Phil’s daddy died.
Then everything unraveled.
