FINDING OUR TRIBE

By Susan Mallery

With more than 25 million books sold worldwide, New York Times bestselling author Susan Mallery is known for creating characters who feel as real as the folks next door, and for putting them into emotional, often funny situations readers recognize from their own lives. Susan’s books have made Booklist’s Top 10 Romances list in four out of five consecutive years. RT Book Reviews says, “When it comes to heartfelt contemporary romance, Mallery is in a class by herself.” With her popular, ongoing Fool’s Gold series, Susan has reached new heights on the bestsellers lists and has won the hearts of countless new fans.

Susan grew up in southern California, moved so many times that her friends stopped writing her address in pen, and now has settled in Seattle with her husband and the most delightfully spoiled little dog who ever lived. Visit Susan online.

I think that deep down, everyone wants to belong. It’s hard-wired into our DNA. When we’re alone, truly alone, we feel lost, adrift. We need to know that someone cares about us. We need to care about others, to be connected to the world around us in some way. We need to be part of a tribe.

Almost all of us do it, all our lives. We either join a community or we form one. We have our families, our friends, our clubs, our churches and schools. We’re brought together by blood or shared interest or just a snarky sense of humor. We meet a like-minded soul, and we know immediately, we belong to the same tribe.

Have you ever become instant friends with someone just because she reads romance? Me, too! That’s what I’m talking about. We’re all part of the romance-reading tribe. We bond over our belief in happy endings.

Intellectually, Felicia Swift, heroine of TWO OF A KIND, my latest Fool’s Gold romance, understands that she needs a tribe. And emotionally, she feels it. Deeply. But she doesn’t know how to get there. She’s one of the smartest people in the world, but her intelligence seems to push people away. Even her parents. They gave her up when she was four, intimidated by her freakish smarts. (It didn’t help that she built a bomb.) They allowed Felicia to be raised on a university campus, where she was fed, clothed, challenged, educated… but never loved.

Felicia has moved to Fool’s Gold, typical small-town America, to learn how to interact with normal people so she can become one of them. She longs to fit in. She served as a logistics expert in the Army for years, and found a community there, but it was a life she was in almost by default. What she truly yearns for is to find her tribe, to fall in love, to have a family.

Men tend to be more solitary than women, but underneath, they need a tribe, too. Even if their tribe consists of just one or two other people. Gideon Boylan doesn’t think so. When he was a prisoner of war, he watched his buddies break, one by one, weakened by the families they loved back home. Gideon was the only survivor because, as he saw it, he had no one to miss.

Felicia thinks there’s safety in numbers, and Gideon feels that safety lies in the number one. Bet you can guess who turns out to be right!

Enter the TWO OF A KIND blog tour contest once a day every day from June 25 through July 7 for a chance to win a $25 Amazon or BN.com gift card! And because this blog was set up by Fool’s Gold Cheerleader Brenda Rumsey, if you win, she’ll win a gift card, too!

Click here to enter.

What shared interests or hobbies helps you make close friends?