Scattered Light by Martha Engber

“Heartbreakingly real... a unique literary triumph.” Byddi Lee, author of Barren

When 36-year-old attorney Mary Donahue of Chicago meets the surprising man of her dreams, she discovers that to love is to risk learning who you really are and what happened to you.

SCATTERED LIGHT is the sequel to WINTER LIGHT, an IPPY Gold Medal winner in YA, in which teen Mary fights to save herself during the blizzard winter of 1978-79 from the poverty and addiction that plague her family. Only when the real storm hits does she learn how little distance exists between success and failure, life and death.

SCATTERED LIGHT begins in 1999. After years of insulating herself from further physical, emotional and financial harm, Mary falls in love with a humble, but world-famous Ugandan human rights lawyer who barely escaped Idi Amin’s butcherous regime.

When his life is endangered, Mary has no choice but to fight for him as she once did for her teen self. Almost losing him dredges up the trauma of her youth, a festering wound that can only be healed by an apparent enigma: to protect herself, she has to bare her soul.

Hair-raising, yet inspiring, SCATTERED LIGHT illuminates a basic truth, that to fully love others, you have to love yourself.

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Pub date: 25-Nov-2025 

Page count: 322

ISBN: 978-3-98832-182-4