"Killing Me Softly"
Sixteen years of silence.
One small town.
A past that was never truly over.
She came to tell him the truth—and leave.
Sixteen years ago, Lena walked away from the only man who had ever truly known her—without telling him why.
Now she has crossed an ocean to find him.
Mark Anderson is no longer the grieving young firefighter she remembers. He is Kerston Ridge’s respected fire chief, a devoted father, and another woman’s husband. Lena plans to tell him the truth and leave before the past can damage the life he built without her.
But their children are falling in love. Her secret novel is being filmed in his town. And when disaster strikes in the mountains, Lena and Mark are forced to confront a connection neither time, silence, nor duty has managed to destroy.
“Killing Me Softly” is an emotionally layered story about first love, family, guilt, and the courage to accept that some loves can be real—even when they are not meant to become a life.
"Killing Me Softly" is a story about:
first love and its lasting emotional imprint;
the consequences of decisions made in grief;
marriage, loyalty, and emotional distance;
motherhood and the instinct to protect;
the stories families tell in order to survive;
the difference between forgiveness and understanding;
belonging to a community that remembers everything;
the question of whether love can return without destroying what came after it.
Between guilt and innocence.
Gillian Foster’s novels explore the emotional territory between guilt and innocence, loyalty and desire, love and responsibility.
Her characters are imperfect people making difficult choices, often with incomplete information. They hurt one another. They protect one another. They misunderstand, forgive, fail, and try again.
Because sometimes the most important question is not:
Who was right?
But:
What did each person believe was true?