Sadie Sheppard

Featured book

Where The Streetlights End

Javier Mendoza has spent most of his life surviving. California raised him on loyalty, concrete, and consequences. Gang life gave him brothers, a reputation, and more trouble than he can count. It also put him behind bars more than once. At thirty-three, Javier knows exactly how his story is supposed to end. He just never expected to watch it happen to somebody else first. When one of his closest homeboys is shot and killed right in front of him, something in Javier finally changes. His older brother, Rafael, has spent years begging him to leave California and come stay with him in the tiny Alabama town he now calls home. For once, Javier listens. He plans to stay two weeks. Then he meets Nia Mae Calloway. Nia is country down to her bones and proud of every bit of it. She lives deep down an Alabama back road with her two boys, Isaiah and Micah, where chickens roam the yard, homemade bread cools on the counter, butter gets made instead of bought, and clean clothes still dry beneath the Southern sun. When she isn’t raising her boys or turning old clothes into something new, Nia does nails and saves every dollar she can toward opening a nail shop of her own. To Javier, her entire way of life is ridiculous. To Nia, the tattooed California man who complains about bugs, doesn’t understand why anybody would make butter when grocery stores exist, and looks suspiciously into the woods every time a branch snaps is even more ridiculous. So naturally, they get on each other’s nerves. Javier makes fun of her country ways. Nia gives it right back. But somewhere between fresh bread, loud chickens, dark back roads, two little boys who refuse to leave him alone, and a woman who makes peace look like something worth having, Javier starts forgetting that Alabama was only supposed to be temporary. For the first time in his life, he can imagine something beyond surviving. A home. A family. A future. But California didn’t disappear just because Javier crossed a state line. He left behind years of violence, loyalty, enemies, and unfinished business—and some things have a way of following you no matter how far you run. Javier came to Alabama believing he had reached the middle of nowhere. Instead, at the place where the streetlights end, he may have finally found everything he never knew he wanted.