For Alicia Tilman a seventeen-year-old girl on her way to Radcliffe meeting her parents' expectations means everything. But when Dickey Samson comes around Alicia defies her father's longstanding rule that she stay away from the boy and is unprepared for the consequences that rain down upon her: a baby a near shooting estrangement.

Learning the dark family secret behind her father's warning Alicia leaves her home in Chesapeake Virginia and heads for San Francisco. Alone pregnant and homeless Alicia makes a decision that will alter her relationship with her family forever.

Chronicling the hardships and triumphs of four generations Raising Redemption is a sweeping tribute to the salvation we can only find from within.

R. A. Russell is a practicing business-law attorney in Los Angeles California. Russell graduated with honors from Claremont McKenna College in 1971 after majoring in history and philosophy. In 1974 Russell graduated from Harvard Law School with an emphasis on corporate and tax law. Raising Redemption is his first novel.

"From a three-room shanty on the Chesapeake Bay to the halls of Academe and the ski slopes of World Cup glory-the story of Raising Redemption achieves an epic sweep yet retains an intimate personal address with a lively direct style that will keep you turning the pages. By turns suspenseful and moving this tale of adversity and triumph-and above all the indomitable power of familial bonds-will inspire many readers." -James Morrison author of Said and Done and Everyday Ghosts