Allegiance

Imagine walking unaware into your house and overhearing your best friend Candy and your husband Logan arguing in your bedroom about the baby they've made, and conspiring not to tell her husband O.B., since it would kill him to know that his best friend Logan has betrayed him. That is the situation in which pharmacist and independent mother of two, Keri Slater finds herself the day before her husband, combat medic Logan ships out on his fourth tour of duty from their idyllic home in Southern Pines, North Carolina. Both men are part of the last deployments to Afghanistan before the president's draw down of troops in the spring of 2014, and the two couples have been friends and neighbors for four years. Four long, convenient years. Could it be that Logan has deftly concealed his affair with Candy from Keri since she's known him, or is this just a grave misunderstanding that she lets spin out of control, leaving Keri second guessing everything she's said, done, and seen during the last six years of her life? A wall has always surrounded the silent side of Staff Sergeant Logan Slater, but Keri has attributed his reticence to his introverted personality, along with his altruistic desire to protect her from the horrors of war he's experienced, not to covering up an affair with her neighbor and best friend, Candy O'Brien. Keri must endure the enigmatic silence further when Logan returns home as a decorated war hero, rendered without speech from an injury, until Keri figures out the truth for herself-the truth that could destroy all four of them as the story unravels. Her children, three-year-old Cole and five-year-old Lacey challenge her to pledge her allegiance to her friends, the way Keri and Logan have always taught them, but are they too young to understand such abstract concepts, and to fathom what really goes on in the lives of grownup men and women?