The Girl in the Rain: The First Crusade (The Epic Forgotten)

John Chapel died with the name of a woman on his lips who didn't exist-a man destroyed by a story no one else believed.

A decorated detective once known for his razor-sharp mind, he spent his final months chasing shadows through rain-soaked memories, consumed by a phantom that existed only in the pages of his journal and the darkest corners of his unraveling mind. That leather-bound journal chronicled this descent-ink-stained pages filled with visions that materialized whenever the rain came pattering at his bedroom windows. The journal entries deteriorated over time; familiar handwriting gave way to frantic scrawls of archaic names and references to places long vanished from maps, eventually dissolving into languages he'd never learned-Latin phrases and Old French verses that his wife later recognized as the same unintelligible murmurings that escaped his lips during fitful sleep.

Despite his wife's unwavering faith and tireless determination, she could only watch helplessly as the man she loved slowly faded like a fingerprint on a window being washed away by the rain. Months after his death, a new discovery forces Gwenn Chapel to confront the possibility that John's story was far from over and may prove that those pages in that journal he'd left behind were more than just the ramblings of a troubled man. Now with renewed determination to pick up her husband's story where it left off, she must return to the one man whose dismissal of her husband's sanity cut deepest-the same man who might be the only one who can decipher the ghostly cipher John left behind.

Dr. James Campbell, brilliant but reclusive history professor and her husband's most trusted mentor, who'd insisted that John's episodes were rooted in unresolved trauma from his past: childhood friendships fractured by tragedy, estranged parents, and echoes of a love that never truly ended. Campbell compounds Gwenn's unease by enlisting the help of Jeremy Connelly- the childhood friend who'd stood beside John until the very end, and whose lingering glances had once offered her a different future. Time has only sharpened the calculating intelligence behind his smile, and those eyes still measuring what can be gained - the same qualities that earned him the nickname "The Con Man" among their old circle. As Gwenn reopens wounds both fresh and decades-old, uncovering her husband's dark past, she begins to question both of their motivations behind helping her and suspects that one of them is hiding a dark secret of his own. Torn between trust and suspicion, she must decide whether the truth will save her-or consume her as it did John.

This first installment of The Epic Forgotten saga plunges readers into an exploration of love's three faces, where a widow's desperate search, the pursuit of redemption by two men haunted by memories both inherited and earned, and the echoing whispers of a medieval crusader converge across time's hidden passages to unravel a mystery spanning centuries. Perfect for readers who enjoy the eerie psychological storytelling of Richard Matheson, the coming-of-age emotional weight of The Outsiders, and the rain-soaked crime drama atmosphere of Michael Mann.

J Christopher Wickham currently lives in Fenton, Michigan, where he spends much of his time thinking up clever plots to entertain his fans and "dad jokes" to entertain his children. His writing has been compared to Grisham, a bit of Bradbury, and even Stephenie Meyer, by the ambitious Book Genome Project. The Girl in the Rain has received the Gold Book Award from Literary Titan.