The Sunbeam Room by Scott Charlton Paul

United by blood, but divided by life experience, geography and politics, Sarah and Digger couldn’t be more different.

A failed marriage, a crippling injury, and losing his only family connection leave Digger, a sixty-one-year-old Alberta oil sands worker, alone and directionless until his mother’s shocking confession and dying wish upends his life.

Sarah is a cautious number-crunching actuary in Ottawa. But her ordered world collapses when her husband is diagnosed with early-onset dementia just as the world shuts down.

In The Sunbeam Room, Digger embarks on a TransCanada quest to honour his mother’s dying request: hand deliver a letter to Sarah, the daughter she gave up at birth.

In the wake of the Freedom Convoy, Digger confronts winter roads, angry truckers, and a midnight moose on his odyssey to the nation’s capital. But he arrives at the worst possible time for a beleaguered Sarah, still grieving the loss of Pieter and battling social isolation.

Suddenly siblings, will Digger and Sarah be able to cross the great divide, reconcile their differences, and embrace newfound family in the unlikeliest of people–each other?

In this literary novel about loss, love, and finding hope in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, Scott Charlton Paul interprets the hearts of opposites to give readers fresh insights into the meaning of family.