Nineteen Days

Genevieve hates cruises. All that lounging around quaffing cocktails and too much food. But Peter, her husband, bought this one for her after the worst year of her life, and she couldn't tell him she didn't want to go. They are both still traumatised from an unimaginable family tragedy, and each of them has gone into hiding behind small talk and silence.  

A cruise is also the last place Genevieve could imagine making a friend, but in Thomas, a morbidly obese man who inhabits a patch of shade on the deck, she meets someone she can talk to. She tells him her story. Thomas himself has an odd past. He is a refugee from the priesthood of an oppressive Catholic cult, an experience that poisoned the only relationship he cared about.  

In the gentle relationship a kind of healing takes place, until Peter drops a bombshell. By the end of the cruise, all their lives have changed.  A story about strange and unexpected friendships, about the facades that people wear, and about what happens when they break. Most of all it is a story about how love manages to seep through the cracks.