A Spark of Light

The warm fall day starts like any other at the Center, a women's reproductive health services clinic, its staff offering care to anyone who passes through its doors. Then a desperate and distraught gunman bursts in and opens fire, taking hostages.

After rushing to the scene, Hugh McElroy, a police hostage nego-tiator, begins making a plan to communicate with the gunman. To his horror, he learns that his fifteen year old daughter, Wren, is inside. She will share the next and tensest few hours of her young life with a cast of unforgettable characters trapped alongside her in the clinic, including the disturbed individual himself.

Told in a daring and enthralling narrative structure that counts backward through the hours of the standoff, the story traces what brought each of the very different individuals to the same place on this fateful day. How do we balance the rights of pregnant women with the rights of the unborn they carry? What does it mean to be a good parent? A Spark of Light will inspire debate, conversation . . . and, hopefully, understanding.