They Called It Love Anyway

At sixteen, Adam Weller comes home covered in blood. Four boys are dead, and the police, courts, and newspapers begin turning the night into a record that can be filed, argued, and kept. Adam will spend the rest of his life inside the part the record cannot hold. Decades later, working in a prison records office, Adam handles other lives reduced to statements, inventories, dates, and charges. Conor O'Roarke's file traces the cost of a life built around being useful. Cynthia Anne Sinclair Mercer's file shows a marriage becoming evidence one object at a time. As their records pass through Adam's hands, the distance between what happened and what can be proved becomes impossible for him to ignore. They Called It Love Anyway: A Novel in Three Files is literary fiction about violence, shame, desire, memory, and the stories people tell when love is the last explanation they have left.