Heather Wright

Between Worlds 2 Heather Wright

Empathy is harder than it looks.

After forgetting her tap shoes at her first class in a new dance studio, Juliana worries she's missed her only chance at making friends. Distraught, she tells her dad how she's feeling. When he ignorantly dismisses her concern as always, the years of absence his truck driving has caused come crashing down on them, threatening to destroy any desire Juliana has of forgiving her father.

Expecting to find solace in Opa, Juliana is shocked when her grandfather takes Dad's side: to Opa, Juliana's dad is worlds better than Georg, a cousin long passed, who couldn't support his family. But Juliana soon suspects that Opa doesn't know everything.

A year has passed since the war ended, and Georg is still a shell of a human being. He says very little and succumbs to inexplicable fits. Everyone ridicules him, and even Elisabeth is frightened of him. But when she has to help with wedding preparations for one of Georg's sisters, Elisabeth begins to believe that there's more to her cousin's fits and visions than others claim.

In Between Worlds 2: The Distance, Juliana and Elisabeth find that empathy to understand those they misunderstand the most needs more courage than they believe they have.