The Four We Were
In 1971, four nine-year-olds in Dowling, Iowa, believed the world belonged to them.
Kevin Malloy, Doug Heller, Randy Tuttle, and Kim Jorgensen came from different homes, different schools, and different circumstances, but none of that mattered once they were on their bicycles. Their days were measured in city blocks, creek beds, football games, swimming pools, backyard wars, and how long they could stay outside before somebody called them home.
What they didn't understand was how much each of them needed those days.
Kevin lived in a comfortable home ruled by a father whose version of love could leave bruises. Doug struggled against a body he could not always control and parents determined to protect him from almost everything. Randy had the least money and the most freedom, growing up in a house where his mother worked herself exhausted and his father rarely stayed. And Kim, fearless enough to take on any boy in the neighborhood, carried a secret none of her friends knew how to see.
At the center of their world was Randy's small house on the south side and his mother, Darlene-a woman who never tried to save anyone, but always seemed to have room for one more child at the table.
The four grow up together through Vietnam, first love, football, drugs, cars, changing families, and the slow realization that childhood does not end all at once. Then 1980 arrives, and three of them leave Dowling while one remains behind.
Decades pass. Careers are built. Marriages begin and end. Children grow up. Success, failure, addiction, grief, and distance reshape the people they once knew better than anyone.
Then Darlene dies.
For the first time in years, all four return to the house where so much of their childhood happened. Surrounded by rooms that seem smaller than they remember, they begin to understand how much they knew about one another-and how much they never knew at all.
The Four We Were is a novel about lifelong friendship, the secrets children carry, the families we are born into, and the people who become home. It is about growing apart without ever completely letting go, and discovering that sometimes the people who knew us first still know something about us no one else ever will.
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