Debby Handman writes women’s fiction that explores the psychological aftermath of loss, betrayal, and starting over.
Stories of grief and the work of rebuilding a life.
After his death, she discovers the life he never let her see.
About The Gambler’s Wife
The man she mourns is not the man she discovers
Lauren Westbrook believed she was living a full and faithful life. As the wife of a respected Salem pastor, she trusted that the darkest years of her husband’s gambling addiction were long behind them. Therapy, accountability, and forgiveness had stitched their marriage back together. Or so she thought.
When Marcus dies suddenly in what appears to be a tragic accident, Lauren’s grief is quickly complicated by devastating revelations. His addiction never ended. Beneath their carefully constructed lives was a web of deception, embezzlement, and betrayal that leaves Lauren reeling and financially gutted. With a daughter to support and her world unraveling, Lauren is forced to confront a painful truth: the man she loved is not the man she is only now beginning to understand.
With few options left, Lauren accepts a position as pastor of a struggling church in a remote Oregon town. The building is decaying, the congregation is wary, and the church has a reputation for chewing up pastors like chicken bones. Still, Lauren is determined to survive, even if faith no longer comes easily.
As she works to rebuild both the church and herself, Lauren forms an unexpected bond with Luke, a quiet carpenter carrying wounds of his own. Together, and alongside a community shaped by long-buried failures, Lauren begins to reckon with loss, belief, and the cost of truth. What emerges is not redemption without scars, but the possibility of a life rebuilt on honesty rather than illusion.
She wasn’t ready when the storm hit
About House on Sand
Ellie Gold thought she understood the rhythm of her life. A steady marriage. A familiar church. A beautiful family she believed was secure.
When her husband of fifteen years confesses an affair with a close family member, the revelation shatters everything she trusted.
In the aftermath, a single moment on a freezing river bridge leaves her asking the question she has avoided for years: where is God when everything you believe in falls apart? With two young sons depending on her, Ellie must keep moving forward even as her world unravels.
As Ellie navigates grief, shame, and the long road back to herself, unexpected friendships with a circle of women who refuse to let her disappear, and a tentative connection with an enigmatic neighbor, offer no easy answers. Only the fragile possibility that healing does not come all at once. It comes in fragments. In courage. And in choosing to stand again after even the worst betrayal.