Love & Attachment
Cheryl and Mike are devoted to one another, but trust, jealousy, sexuality, fear and old wounds keep testing what devotion actually means.
BOOK 1 OF 5AN ADULT INSPIRATIONAL ROMANCE • WASHINGTON, D.C. • 1979
She knows how to love.
Now she has to learn who comes first.
Cheryl Fields has ambition, beauty, a fierce love for Mike Johnson, and a place in the Black Greek world at Maryland State University. But when fraternity loyalty, dangerous hazing and a new faith collide, Cheryl has to decide whether love means holding on—or finally seeing clearly.
WRITER'S DIGEST
“The writing is rich… characters, individually and collectively, strong…”
LOVE✦BLACK GREEK LIFE✦FAITH✦IDENTITY✦LOYALTY✦REDEMPTION
CHERYL'S WORLD
A love story with a fault line running through it.
The novel begins with the pull between Cheryl and Mike, but its real terrain is larger: what it costs to belong, what wounds people carry into love, and what happens when faith demands a loyalty deeper than romance or fraternity.
Explore the spoiler-free story →“We knew people look on the outside without peering into the soul. Mike and I were drawn by the pull of our souls.”— Cheryl Fields, Chapter 1
WHAT THE STORY PUTS ON THE TABLE
Love can be true and still not be enough.
Brotherhood & Hazing
Greek life offers identity, tradition and family while the pledge culture exposes the dangerous point where belonging becomes power over another person.
Faith & Calling
Perry's friendship opens Cheryl to a Christian faith that becomes an active force in her choices rather than a decorative belief.
Race, Beauty & Identity
Cheryl's experience of color, beauty, family history and being seen before being known gives the romance a deeper emotional frame.
MEET THE PEOPLE WHO PULL CHERYL IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS
Four people. Four kinds of loyalty.
Cheryl Fields
First-generation college student, Delta, resident assistant, future veterinarian—and a woman learning that being loved is not the same as being whole.
Mike Johnson
Charismatic, gifted and fiercely loyal. Cheryl's great love is also deeply tied to the fraternity culture she begins to question.
Perry
Basketball player, Bible-study leader and would-be pledge whose quiet spiritual confidence gives Cheryl another model of strength.
Donna
Soror, friend and emotional mirror whose own search for love and belonging becomes inseparable from Cheryl's journey.
READ THE OPENING
It starts with a jersey, a smile, and secrets Cheryl doesn't yet understand.
The first chapter introduces the magnetic pull between Cheryl and Mike, the pressure of being a Black student on a predominantly White campus, and the Greek world that will eventually change both of them.
Read Chapter 1 ExcerptCHAPTER ONE • FIRST FIELDS
“He came to me like in a midnight dream, a shining prince.”
“Mike was the first man I met who wasn't taken by my beauty. He seemed genuinely interested in who I was.”
FOR BOOK CLUBS, CHURCHES & CAMPUS GROUPS
This is a novel built to be argued about.
Discuss love versus loyalty, the ethics of hazing, Black Greek identity, sexuality, family trauma, forgiveness, Christian conversion and whether good intentions excuse destructive choices.
01
Where does loyalty become complicity?
02Can romantic love occupy a place faith says belongs to God?
03Does suffering make people stronger—or teach them to normalize harm?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kenneth Bossard
Kenneth Bossard was born in Washington, D.C., and pledged Kappa Alpha Psi as a freshman at the University of Maryland at College Park. His background in psychology, journalism and faith informs a novel that looks at the Black collegiate experience from inside the pressures of love, Greek life, ambition and spiritual awakening.
Read Kenneth's story →BOOK 1 IS ONLY THE BEGINNING
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