About the Book
East Texas, 1972. Sixteen-year-old Leni O'Hare spends her free time drawing and galloping her mare across the chaparral. Horse crazy and rebellious, she fears her dream of becoming an artist will be thwarted by her strict mother, the small-town values of her community, and her family's meager finances. A desperate bid to save her beloved mare from being sold brings her together with Caleb McGrath, the brainy and gentle scion of the county's richest rancher, whose dream of becoming a physicist also pushes the bounds of their town and defies his family's expectations.
When tragedy strikes Leni's family, and Caleb's brother returns from Vietnam angry and dangerous, the two grow closer and make a plan to leave and start a life together. Before they can go, though, Leni learns of something she fears will derail Caleb's hard-earned shot at the future he wants. Choosing to keep what she's learned secret, she sets them on sudden and separate paths.
New York City, 1986. Leni, now an artist and activist, and Caleb, now engaged and working on Wall Street, meet once again. Their old passion reignites. Can their love for one another overcome the choices made in the past? And when Leni's secret-one that impacts not only Leni and Caleb but also four generations of Leni's family-is finally revealed, will it be too late for them?
About the Author :
Donnaldson Brown grew up riding horses across the Texas plains. An attorney and former screenwriter, she’s performed her spoken word pieces in and around New York, including for the Berkshire Theatre Festival and the Deep Listening Institute. Her personal essay “Spell Breaking” was published in the anthology Spell Breaking: Listening to the Dreaming Heart. She is a current fellow of Craigardan Arts Colony and past fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. She divides her time between Brooklyn, New York, and the Berkshires in western Massachusetts.
Review :
“The story is a compelling one, with Leni and Cal's relationship at its core. The two come across as fully realized characters, not just star-crossed lovers. Brown brings both the Texas and New York settings to life, and complex secondary characters, especially Foy and Hank, add to the novel's richness....a page-turning story that will keep readers invested.” —Kirkus Reviews
“In this beautifully rendered, evocative novel Donnaldson Brown paints a portrait of star-crossed lovers, brought together by their love of horses and torn apart by tragedy and closely-guarded secrets. And yet there is an enduring power to this love that traverses decades and takes many forms, even as their lives take them in different directions. Brown brings her characters from the darkness of loss and betrayal into the light of forgiveness and ultimately peace.”
—Mary Morris, award-winning novelist, most recently of Gateway to the Moon
“What I love most about Donnaldson Brown’s first novel, Because I Loved You isn’t the tactile reality of places and times that she so sharply renders – the harsh beauty of East Texas, New York City in the simultaneous throes of guerilla art and AIDS and financial obscenity, the tender urgency of first love – but her ability to feel so deeply into her characters that even as they make shattering mistakes we can believe along with them that their actions are exactly what they need to do in the moment, just as they convince us of who they become in consequence. Brown is a writer with the deepest empathy for imperfect humanity, and her people and their lasting impact on each other is so knowable it makes you ache.”
—Kate Moses, author of Cake Walk, A Memoir, and Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath
“The characters in this deeply moving, lushly imagined novel stayed with me long after I turned the last page. A novel of passion and place, ambition and expectation, Because I Loved You is a beautifully written story that speaks with equal tenderness to the wild abandon of young love and the awful heartbreak of dreams deferred. A gorgeous debut.”
—Amy Brill, author of The Movement of Stars
“Because I Loved You is a gorgeous book, heartbreaking and joyous, full of love and wisdom. In chiseled prose that evokes a precise sense of place and time, Brown explores the conflicting pulls of love and duty and what a life can be. The novel begins as a slow burn and grows incandescent. You won’t want to let go.”
—Alexandra Enders, author of Bride Island
“Cal and Leni first fall in love with horses, then with each other, a love that not even Donnaldson Brown's beautifully rendered North Texas landscapes can contain. Because they’ve other loves, as well, mathematics for Cal, art for Leni, which conflict with the expectations of their families and their town.There are other secrets, too, one of them buried so deep under Leni's family tree that perhaps it should remain, but it can't, not if Leni is to be free. Because I Loved You is deeply affecting, swooningly romantic, hard as diamonds, too: dreams don't always add up, and trouble can sometimes be our friend.”
—Bill Roorbach, author of Lucky Turtle, Life Among Giants, and The Remedy for Love
“Expansive and intimate, rural and urban, tragic and romantic, Because I Loved You embodies all of the expansiveness and intimacy of a contemporary Western page-turner, and more. Starting in a small town in East Texas and traveling to New York City and beyond, this vivid, riveting narrative will transport you and break your heart at the same time. The vibrant, memorable characters of Leni and Cal will stay with you long after you turn the last page of this beautiful novel.”
—S. Kirk Walsh, author of the national bestseller, The Elephant of Belfast
