Author Paula Detmer Riggs is magnificent at creating characters with wounded spirits, and NEVER WALK ALONE proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt.  Hero Rhys Hazard has experienced the worst life can offer a man.  He was sentenced to four years in prison at the age of seventeen for vehicular manslaughter.  To add to that, he served his sentence without parole, and with the disadvantage of a severely injured hip that was the result of the crash that put him behind bars.  During his trial and incarceration the entire town pretty much turned against him, including his mother and father and younger brother.

Now, the town is attempting to recover from a devastating flood and Rhys has anonymously purchased the one surviving major company in order to provide jobs and incomes to the unemployed citizens.  His intention is to never return to Osuma, Washington but, when a automobile accident sidelines his chief operating officer, he is forced to step in and handle the opening of his company's plant.  From the moment he returns, fresh wounds are opened, and it doesn't help when the only good inn in town is owned by the sister of one of his victims. 

Brina Sullivan is not only the sister of the young teen killed in that fatal accident years ago, but she is also the ex-wife of Rhys's younger brother.  A divorcee with two kids, Brina has worked hard to make a success of her historical inn.  She's had to take care of her two kids financially with almost no help from her ex, so she is extremely happy to have the lucrative contract housing the executives of North Star Trucking.  What she doesn't know is that North Star's owner is someone she's hated for years. 

You now have the outline for a story that this reviewer promises will blow you away!  The hero and heroine are no strangers to humiliation and suffering.  Each has experienced a lot of angst and in some cases the angst was administered to both by the same brain-deficient individual.  What keeps the story flowing and upbeat is the love that develops between the two characters, and how that love overflows into the lives of the secondary characters that have also been tainted by life's mishaps.  Add an adorable five year old whose love knows no bounds, and a confused twelve year old that badly needs the stability and strength of the hero, and you have one of the finest novels to be released this year.