For decades, life in a mid-size town in Western Massachusetts has been predictable, steady and uneventful for the Haydens: Steve, Grace and their daughter, Baker. When Steve learns his company plans to move their entire operation to Sherman, North Carolina, a series of new challenges and decisions face the Hayden family who are completely unprepared to address this unsettling event. When Baker meets Mark Knox, a younger co-worker at a summer resort in Maine, she becomes aware, from his family’s life, of a very different future for herself. As Mark and Baker become romantically entwined, he observes how a single economic event can capsize the lives of a family, destroying their plans, ambitions and dreams.
J.F. Foran has worked internationally as a management consultant for over thirty years. His consulting covered corporate strategy for multinational corporations and public policy for federal and state governments. He was a founder of Strategic Decisions Group and has served on the boards of several public and private companies and also as a Trustee of Save the Children and the Belvedere-Tiburon Library. His experience with corporations and their employees facing conditions beyond their control is a dominant interest. How individuals and institutions select survival strategies under these conditions fascinate him. His first novel, Angels on a Tombstone, was awarded Best Historical Fiction in 2019 by the Independent Press Awards. His second novel, A Mistaken Hostage, published in 2021 has received positive reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Midwest Book Reviews and others. He received his undergraduate degree from Middlebury College and his master’s degree from the Wharton School. He currently resides in Mill Valley, California with his wife, Karen.
