In the Comfort of Shadows — Laurel Bragstad

In the Comfort of Shadows is a story of family secrets and the love and romance often found hidden deep within sins of the past. The novel follows Ann Olson, a big city professor, who longs to fill in the empty pages of her childhood. Unfortunately the only man alive who knows the whole story is Emmett Pederson, her adoptive dad's crazy, poor, hermit cousin who never married and still lives on his run-down farm in rural Wisconsin. Disregarding her sister's objections, Ann stubbornly sets out to prove that Emmett is their "father unknown." Once she gets over Emmett's shabby clothes and missing teeth, she senses a surprising connection to him. That changes when she discovers Emmett's WW2 diaries which reveal the truth about her Austrian-born birth mother. As Ann struggles to sort out the facts of her birth parents' forbidden romance and her own adoption, she finds herself falling in love with a man who has heart-breaking secrets of his own.