[Complete] [127k] [upmarket women's fiction] A Place to Land
New to Reddit and I messed up once already (sorry). I'm looking for beta readers. Here's a summary:
Elizabeth Thomas is the person others turn to when everything falls apart. A former Navy intelligence officer, pilot, nurse, and successful businesswoman, her first instinct has always been to step toward people in need rather than away from them.
When Blackburn lead singer Billy Zane is kidnapped in Yemen, Liz leads the effort to stabilize him in a remote clinic. As Billy's condition deteriorates beyond what the remote clinic can manage, Liz and her team risk their lives to get him to safety. Charged with providing medical updates to Billy's emergency contact, guitarist Jackson Bradley, Liz expects a series of routine conversations about Billy's condition. Instead, she discovers a devoted father and loyal friend struggling to hold together a life already strained by personal upheaval.
As Billy recovers, the medical updates become less frequent, but the conversations between Liz and Jackson do not. Built on honesty and growing trust, their friendship is tested when Jackson's ex-wife is seriously injured while he is touring overseas, leaving their young son, JJ, without anyone willing or able to care for him. For Jackson, Liz becomes the person he trusts when he cannot be there for his son. For JJ, she becomes the steady, dependable adult who never asks him to choose sides, shoulder adult worries, or be anything other than a little boy.
Watching Liz move heaven and earth for a little boy she barely knows, Jackson realizes she isn't stepping in because of who he is. She's stepping in because of who she is. For the first time since his world was turned upside down, Jackson knows his son is exactly where he needs to be.
Just as Liz begins to believe she has found the family she never expected, a stranger claiming to be her stepfather arrives with news she never imagined hearing. He tells her that Sandra, the mother who abused her throughout childhood, is dying of aplastic anemia. After a bone marrow transplant from an unrelated donor fails, Liz is Sandra's only living relative—and the only possible donor.
Those who love Liz cannot understand why she would save the woman who abused her throughout childhood. Liz knows she does not want Sandra back in her life, but one question refuses to let her walk away: if a stranger needed bone marrow and she was the match, would she donate? She knows the answer is yes. Setting aside the wounds of the past, she chooses to donate.
Surrounded by the family she never expected, Liz discovers the quiet power of accepting the love she has spent a lifetime trying to earn.
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