Because I Loved You - by Donnaldson Brown (Paperback)

About the Book

Sixteen-year-old aspiring artist Leni O'Hare loves brainy, gentle Caleb McGrath--so much so that she keeps from him a secret that would prevent their escape from their crumbling families and the remote Texas town that will surely crush their dreams. But the choice she makes casts a shadow that follows them both for generations--from Vietnam-era East Texas to New York City's downtown art scene in the 1980s, up to the present day. What will it take for the secret to be revealed?

Book Synopsis

Sixteen-year-old aspiring artist Leni O'Hare loves brainy, gentle Caleb McGrath-so much so that she keeps from him a secret that would prevent their escape from their crumbling families and the remote Texas town that will surely crush their dreams. But the choice she makes casts a shadow that follows them both for generations--from Vietnam-era East Texas to New York City's downtown art scene in the 1980s, up to the present day. What will it take for the secret to be revealed?

Review Quotes

2024 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards Silver Winner in Fiction: General
2023 International Book Awards Finalist in Fiction: Literary
2023 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist in General Fiction/Novel (70,000 to 100,000 words)

"The story is a compelling one, with Leni and Cal's relationship at its core. The two come across as fully realized characters, not just star-crossed lovers. Brown brings both the Texas and New York settings to life, and complex secondary characters, especially Foy and Hank, add to the novel's richness....a page-turning story that will keep readers invested."

-Kirkus Reviews

"In this beautifully rendered, evocative novel Donnaldson Brown paints a portrait of star-crossed lovers, brought together by their love of horses and torn apart by tragedy and closely-guarded secrets. And yet there is an enduring power to this love that traverses decades and takes many forms, even as their lives take them in different directions. Brown brings her characters from the darkness of loss and betrayal into the light of forgiveness and ultimately peace."
--Mary Morris, award-winning novelist, most recently of Gateway to the Moon

"What I love most about Donnaldson Brown's first novel, Because I Loved You isn't the tactile reality of places and times that she so sharply renders - the harsh beauty of East Texas, New York City in the simultaneous throes of guerilla art and AIDS and financial obscenity, the tender urgency of first love - but her ability to feel so deeply into her characters that even as they make shattering mistakes we can believe along with them that their actions are exactly what they need to do in the moment, just as they convince us of who they become in consequence. Brown is a writer with the deepest empathy for imperfect humanity, and her people and their lasting impact on each other is so knowable it makes you ache."
--Kate Moses, author of Cake Walk, A Memoir, and Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath

"The characters in this deeply moving, lushly imagined novel stayed with me long after I turned the last page. A novel of passion and place, ambition and expectation, Because I Loved You is a beautifully written story that speaks with equal tenderness to the wild abandon of young love and the awful heartbreak of dreams deferred. A gorgeous debut."
--Amy Brill, author of The Movement of Stars

"Because I Loved You is a gorgeous book, heartbreaking and joyous, full of love and wisdom. In chiseled prose that evokes a precise sense of place and time, Brown explores the conflicting pulls of love and duty and what a life can be. The novel begins as a slow burn and grows incandescent. You won't want to let go."
--Alexandra Enders, author of Bride Island

"Cal and Leni first fall in love with horses, then with each other, a love that not even Donnaldson Brown's beautifully rendered North Texas landscapes can contain. Because they've other loves, as well, mathematics for Cal, art for Leni, which conflict with the expectations of their families and their town.There are other secrets, too, one of them buried so deep under Leni's family tree that perhaps it should remain, but it can't, not if Leni is to be free. Because I Loved You is deeply affecting, swooningly romantic, hard as diamonds, too: dreams don't always add up, and trouble can sometimes be our friend."
--Bill Roorbach, author of Lucky Turtle, Life Among Giants, and The Remedy for Love

"Expansive and intimate, rural and urban, tragic and romantic, Because I Loved You embodies all of the expansiveness and intimacy of a contemporary We