“Love the Wounded” by Lynn Dove is the final and dramatic conclusion to her brilliant Wounded Trilogy series that has followed the lives of teenagers Jake, Leigh, Mike, Dylan and Tim as they come to terms with a series of tragedies and events that have made each of them question why God allows “bad things to happen to good people”.

Leigh does not know who to choose…her heart tells her she will always love Jake, but he has changed so much since the death of their friend, Ronnie, and with his mother going through breast cancer, he has totally closed himself off from her emotionally. Now she is dating Dylan and try as she might to accept him for who he is, she can’t stop thinking about Jake! Dylan has never gotten over the loss of his father and little sister, killed by a drunk driver when he was just a young boy.

After a horrific accident that has put both Tim and his little brother, Evan in the hospital, everyone knows that not only is he being bullied at school; he cuts himself to cope with it all. But meeting Cassidy has given him the courage to stand up to the bullies and at the same time give her what she so desperately needs…a life-giving bone marrow transplant. Jake’s mother keeps telling him that “God works all things out for good” but with all the things going on in his life and with his friends, he’s just not sure anymore. It is only after Mike is paralyzed in a car accident that Jake was partially responsible for that all the families and friends will be brought back together, not by coincidence, but by God’s design and then Jake will finally believe that God truly does “Love the Wounded”.

“A life of working with youth has inspired Lynn Dove, a Cochrane mother to turn her experiences into a book trilogy…(the Wounded Trilogy) series that parallels the struggles of students…(and) covers the angst of some of the real serious issues that teenagers face today, particularly with bullying and gossip. ” -Rocky View Weekly-

Exerpt from the book:

Brad Evans, Shane Banister, and Cole Smith surrounded him the moment he stepped outside. He tried to dodge them, but they blocked his escape and Brad hipchecked Tim into the side of the school building while at the same time slamming his head against the brick. Tim grunted as the air was knocked out of him.

“Freak!” Brad spat at Tim. “You’ll always be a freak!”

Cole knocked Tim’s backpack out of his hand and Shane kicked it like a football into a snowbank.

Tim cringed as Brad raised a fist to strike him again in the face. He closed his eyes, expecting the punch to land, when suddenly he heard a deep voice snarl, “Not on my watch, mister!”

(p. 152 Love the Wounded by Lynn Dove)

About the Author: Winner of a Canadian Christian Writing Award in 2011, Lynn Dove’s debut novel, Shoot the Wounded, written for teens and young adults was a finalist in the 2010 Readers Favorite Book Awards. Heal the Wounded, released in 2010, the second book in this series won the Bronze Medal in the 2011 Readers Favorite Book Awards in the Young Adult – Coming of Age category. Love the Wounded is the final book in the “Wounded Trilogy.”