Five books. One through-line.

On the morning of May 4th, 1970, a young man stands on the commons at Kent State University when the National Guard opens fire on a crowd of students. Thirteen seconds. A hand warm and then still. Nothing that follows will be untouched by what happened in those seconds.

What follows is thirty-three years.

The road west into West Virginia and the campfires where veterans told the stories they carried home from wars nobody wanted to hear about anymore. The Dead shows that reached the place where grief lived. The fly shop on the Mad River in Ohio, built from what a dying man left behind, where the work of receiving people in their pain finally found its home. The woman who looked at him with her whole attention and stayed. The farmer from Marlowe County who blamed him, and called him in June 1975 to say that wasn't right, and never stopped showing up.

What the current carries, it turns out, is not only grief. It carries the people who find us when we are most broken and choose to remain — and in that choosing, make something that survives.

For readers of Ron Rash, Wiley Cash, and Richard Russo.

Choosing Connection for Love's Sake is the memoir I had to write before I could fully understand my own life. It moves across decades — from a childhood in upstate New York, through the grief of losing Cindy to cancer, through learning to carry grief while moving forward toward love, and finally into the work and the love that gave me back a reason to stay in the world.

Along the way, there are students — one in particular, a boy named Calvin, whose death in December of 2003 broke something in me and then, slowly, rebuilt it. There is Tammy, who walked into my life and stayed. And there is the trail, the river, and the mountains, which have always been the place where I find the words for things I can't say any other way.

This is a book about grief and gratitude. About what we owe the people who loved us. And about the choice — made again and again, every day — to stay connected even when it hurts.

Gritty and Relentless is the story of a kid who didn't fit — not in the classroom, not on the team, not anywhere that required sitting still and following the rules. It's set in the summers and school years of a small upstate New York town, where Little League mattered and grown-ups had their own problems and the best education happened twelve feet off the ground at the end of a rope swing.

This is my story, told for the young people who will recognize themselves in it: the ones who learn differently, move through the world sideways, and spend years wondering if something is wrong with them. The answer, in case you're wondering, is no. Nothing is wrong with you. Some of us just need a different kind of teacher — the kind who sees past the behavior to the person underneath.

A memoir about being a kid, about the adults who shape us for better and worse, and about what it means to finally feel seen.

Transformative Crisis Management is the professional book I spent thirty years learning to write. It brings together everything I know about crisis intervention, trauma-informed care, and the philosophy that has guided my work since 1998: that connection, not control, is the foundation of genuine safety.

Written for educators, behavioral health professionals, and anyone who works with people in crisis, this book lays out the principles behind MindSet Safety Management's approach — including the Four-Step Model (Acknowledge, Accept, Validate, Empower) and the Connection Over Control philosophy that has shaped training for school districts and agencies across the country and internationally.

This is not a book about restraint techniques or compliance strategies. It's a book about what actually works: meeting people where they are, leading with relationship, and creating the conditions where someone who is struggling can begin to feel safe again.