Strong Together by Jerry Cole

Can a person ever recover from a traumatic upbringing and move on to live and love normally?

What even is “normal” anyway? Four young men from wildly different backgrounds meet at the YOU PROJECT, a shelter for Young, Outcast, Unwanted adults to find their footing and try and integrate into society before it is too late. All they want is to feel whole, normal, and loved. Raised by two alcoholics, Ivan has sworn he would never marry so that he can never recreate the dysfunction he has seen. Francis ran away from home at twelve. They did not find him until he was fourteen, and nobody knows exactly what happened those years.

Matthew is training to be a counsellor, but he isn’t sure he can stomach all of this. He wants to stick at it to help them, but every day at work opens up old wounds he didn’t even know he had. Kicked out at fifteen for being gay, Stephen was shattered and confused. At twenty-one, he is finally too old for the juvenile shelter and is having to live through the same process again, while studying.

Can they come together to discover themselves, and what it means to love? Or are they destined to walk different paths for the rest of their lives? Are some people simply made for tragedy? Or will they remake themselves and discover true love?