Jill Parsons

I was a desperate love addict searching for love in all the wrong places. I was only attracted to unavailable men. I was miserable and switching from one addiction to the next. It finally came to a head when, as a marriage and family therapist trainee, I became romantically involved with a client. He told on me, and as a result, I was expelled from my master’s program. I hit rock bottom. I turned to God and worked the 12 steps of recovery.

Sam Hill always saw the world through different eyes. Born with red pupils, he was called “Devil Boy” or Sam “Hell” by his classmates; “God’s will” is what his mother called his ocular albinism. Her words were of little comfort, but Sam persevered. Sam believed it was God who sent Ernie Cantwell, the only African American kid in his class, to be the friend he so desperately needed. And that it was God’s idea for Mickie Kennedy to storm into Our Lady of Mercy like a tornado, uprooting every rule Sam had been taught about boys and girls. Forty years later, Sam, a small-town eye doctor, is no longer certain anything was by design.