I carried this story for 25 years before finally permitting myself to write it. Eighteen months later, Unlikely Hero exists.

I realized tomorrow wasn’t guaranteed, so someday needed to be now.

Unlikely Hero grew out of fears and questions that felt very close to my own heart. I’ve always felt a quiet panic at the thought of living alone, and I became fascinated by the idea of a canine companion offering not just comfort, but the illusion of security — and how powerful even that illusion can be.

But the story quickly became about something deeper. I wanted to explore how people survive the devastating loss of a soulmate and slowly, imperfectly, reclaim who they are. And I kept returning to a question that troubles me: why do so many people come to feel invisible and irrelevant, even when they still have so much to offer the world? Sometimes the people we barely notice are the ones watching most closely.

Jesse is navigating all of this when a man enters her life — charming, attentive, and somehow always nudging her just past the boundaries of what feels right. She tells herself it’s nothing. That their meeting was pure chance. But not everything that feels random is.