Where I Stand Excerpt

"...Piazza pays off all the conflicts with highly satisfying conclusions. Where I Stand is a good read, a good message, and a good book." --Jen Brown, University of Iowa 

Can a sister's love defeat an army? 

After years of wandering, Alynn has a family again. She shares a loving home with her mother and foster-father, and Drostan, the future Norse chieftain, seeks her hand in marriage. When it seems life can’t get any better, she receives word that Tarin—her beloved little brother, presumed lost at sea—may still be alive.

Alynn isn’t the only one looking for him.

The bloodthirsty Norse tribe of Darsidia is on the warpath, raiding and kidnapping across the Scottish coast, heading straight for Tarin. Alynn tries everything she can to reach him in time, but all her efforts are thwarted. Complicating her plans is the Norse parliament Althing, which threatens to change the lives of everyone on St. Anne’s Cleft—and maybe not for the better.

Alynn will find her brother. Even if it means sacrificing everything she’s come to love.

Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2019

Lukas stood. “Caitriona—!”

“I’m going to find my son!”

The door slammed shut, and it barely moved Alynn from her stupor. Tarin. Sweet, quiet, curious Tarin—he’d be ten now. How long had they been apart? And him alive all this time? Where was he? Was he safe? Was he warm and fed and loved, taken in by a church or a kind family? Oh, she hoped so! She prayed so!

She could do better than pray. She could find him.

Hiding behind brush and trees, the meadow was hard to find for anyone who didn’t know the way. It was a gentle oval, like a trencher carpeted with heather and fringed with tall grasses. And at the edge of the trencher stood Drostan, watch-ing her arrival with a contagious smile in his shining eyes.

“Every day, Lynder,” he said, wrapping his arms around her as soon as she dismounted. “I don’t know how you do it, but every day, you look more beautiful than the last.”

“Thank you, love.”

“I truly mean it.”

Alynn felt her face grow red. She kissed Drostan’s cheek, then lost herself in his embrace. She loved his arms around her, the silence surrounding them, the wind and the heather and the last shuttling rays of the sun.

Humility’s ticklish breath whooshed against Alynn’s neck, and she laughed. Drostan shooed her away. “I thought it was Aunt Cait’s job to keep an eye on us,” he teased as he tethered her to a tree. “Ignore her. How’s life treating you?”

“Just grand.” Alynn smiled, walking hand in hand with Drostan to the heathery middle of the meadow. “And have you calmed down at all about givin’ your speech?”

“I decided I had other things to be nervous about.”

“Such as....”