Those Who Hope

For fifty years Sonoma Gospel Mission has sheltered the poor of Santa Rosa-meals, beds and showers--while offering a residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation program. Now an ambitious developer, Buddy Grace, has plans to gentrify the run-down neighborhood and move the mission elsewhere. When the mission resists his plans, he cooks up a lawsuit to put on pressure. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of an addled would-be activist, presses claims of sexual assault against Jake Dorner, the mission's program manager. Jake is innocent, but those who read the local newspaper can only believe the worst. The publicity creates financial panic for the mission, and family disaster for Jake. The story of Those Who Hope concerns the severe stress that falls on Jake, a recovering addict. Will his marriage survive? Will the mission founder? Most fundamentally, will Jake stay clean? Those Who Hope follows the strange conflicts inherent when drug addiction meets the traditional religion of a rescue mission amid the liberal culture of California's wine country. This is Tim Stafford's sixth novel. It is the first in a series set in and around the Sonoma Gospel Mission.