Introduction

Finding Angie is a novel about what happens when a first love never really ends.

Twenty years ago, Ryan fell in love with a girl he was barely allowed to speak to. The setting was restrictive, insular, and rule-bound, a place that treated feelings as problems and curiosity as a moral failure. What formed there was intense, brief, and unresolved. Angie vanished from his life without explanation, and Ryan never learned how to let it go.

Now in his thirties, and with the clue that will lead him to her, Ryan decides. He gets in his car and drives toward a woman he hasn’t seen since he was a young teenager, armed with little more than memory, doubt, and hope. As he begins his journey, he reflects on the past and the beginning of something that had cast its shadow over his entire adult life.

What makes Finding Angie stand apart is its refusal to romanticize or dismiss that kind of longing. It is a story about how early love can define emotional habits, expectations, and choices long after adolescence has passed.

Readers who enjoy character-driven fiction will recognize the honesty in Ryan’s voice and the frustrations and mixed feelings with which the story unfolds. Others may be drawn to the familiar question at its center: what might happen if the person you never stopped thinking about is still out there. What changed? What might remain the same? Is it better to leave it alone, or to pursue it, and damn the consequences? The novel earns its conclusion by following that question all the way.

Finding Angie is a story about love that lingers, the cost of unanswered questions, and the courage it takes to finally seek resolution. It is less concerned with whether things work out than with whether a person can move forward without knowing, and if they can when they do. For readers who have ever wondered about the road not taken, this is a novel that stays with you.