Two kids. Four houses apart. One impossible year.

He’s the new boy who runs seven miles before sunrise, rebuilding a leg — and a future — that a bullet almost took. She’s the freshman with a 4.0, a five-year plan, and absolutely no time for distractions.

Then he lifts his chin at her window one morning, and she presses her hand to the glass, and nothing about either of their plans survives it.

When the Heart Catches Fire is a 1990s coming-of-age love story told from both sides of a Glendale, Arizona street — where the romance is real, the families are watching, and growing up means learning that the people you love most are sometimes the ones you have to let go.

For readers of first-love stories that stay with you long after the last page

A Novel by  S. W. BELL

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