Love in Translation

Max thought leaving Rotterdam would solve everything. Instead, he discovers that geography doesn't fix psychology.

In Greenville, South Carolina, he finds freedom, and immediately fills it with excess. More parties, more drinks, more women, more of everything he denied himself in the Netherlands. When he meets Dori, a Venezuelan woman carrying her family's asylum case and her own wounds, he thinks he's finally found something real.

Max is still running from conditional love while Dori is still serving to earn it. Both are playing roles, both are protecting themselves, and neither knows how to stop. So he does what he has always done. He leaves, all at once, with a good reason.

Love in Translation is the second book in The Max Trilogy, exploring how taking what we want without building what we need leaves us emptier than before. Freedom without foundation is just another kind of cage.