The Shooting of Nancy Howard: A Journey back to Shore combines love, betrayal, conspiracy, suffering, and survival with a cast of improbable characters: a respected church-going husband and his mistress, a group of colorful criminals in East Texas, and a millionaire businessman. The story opens with Nancy's returning home from a church function on a Saturday night in 2012, and pulling into her garage. As she walks toward the door to her house, she suddenly faces an attacker who demands her purse and then shoots her in the head.  Investigation of the shooting first reveals that Nancy's husband has been having a three-year affair. A few days later, detectives uncover connections between her CPA husband and the East Texas gang. The story becomes increasingly bizarre as evidence surfaces of a murder-for-hire conspiracy initiated by Nancy's husband.     While Nancy deals with multiple injuries, including the loss of an eye, investigators uncover evidence that her husband has been paying large sums to the criminal gang for the expressed purpose of killing his wife. The money source is her husband's rich client, from whom he has extorted over six-million dollars, some of which he has used to give his mistress extravagant gifts. Meanwhile Nancy is undergoing painful repairs to her face, throat, and arm, followed by weeks in rehab.   Nancy's physical suffering is exacerbated by learning of the growing evidence against her husband, at the same time enduring tension with her children, who continue to maintain their father's innocence. During the trials of her husband and the shooter, Nancy learns how many times the would-be killers' plans were thwarted by God's intervention to save her life, even by using the conspirators themselves. Today she is committed to sharing her unwavering faith that God can bring blessings out of the most devastating tragedies. The writing of Nancy's story was born from our shared faith and membership in a church choir; and from similar injuries caused by attacks:Nancy's by a hit-man's bullet, mine by a blow to the face likely linked to the so-called "knock-out game" popular in 2014. The timing for writing the story was felicitous. Nancy had recovered emotionally and physically enough to discuss the details of her suffering. And I had recently retired from the University of North Texas, where I was a professor specializing in British literature.    The story recounts a murder-for-hire conspiracy initiated by a respectable, church-going husband and father who was leading a secret life with his mistress. The conspiracy lasted for almost three years; and it involved an unsavory group of criminals who were paid millions of dollars but failed to kill their target. Aside from the sensational elements, the story describes how a woman's faith enabled her to survive and even thrive after unspeakable losses.  ~Alice Mathews An Excerpt from The Shooting of Nancy Howard: A Journey Back to Shore ... "At what point does an otherwise good man . . . become someone else? Is it when he looks across a casino floor and sees a woman he decides to approach? Perhaps it's when he sees how easily millions of dollars can be diverted from an employer with a dubious reputation? How could a good man know that the price of hidden nights enjoying the body of a stranger could lead to the near death of the woman he had promised to love forever?" Alice M. Mathews is the author of   The Shooting of Nancy Howard: A Journey back to Shore . Dr.  Mathews is a retired professor from the University of North Texas, located in Denton, Texas, where the two trials resulting from the shooting took place.  During her career, Mathews edited an academic journal and taught courses in nonfiction and technical writing, technical editing, British literature, and most often an advanced course on the works of John Milton. She especially enjoyed the opportunity to engage young adults in spirited discussion of theological issues, which often centered on Milton's Paradise Lost. Although she has published academic and feature essays in various publications, this is her first book, inspired by her friendship with Nancy Howard. That friendship was fostered by their common faith and their membership in the First Baptist Church of Carrollton, especially in the church choir. In addition, Dr. Mathews and Nancy experienced several similar surgeries, Nancy's resulting from a shooting and Alice's from a blow to the face, likely linked to the "knock-out game," which was popular in 2014.   Mathews and her husband, Bill, are long-time residents of Carrollton, Texas, a suburb of Dallas and the city where Nancy's shooting took place. The Mathews have two adult daughters, Allison and Meredith, and always at least one cat. They spend many summers in Colorado visiting their daughter Meredith and her family and hiking the mountains near Estes Park.