Distant Relative

What do you owe your past when you've ruined someone's present? And their present includes your child?

Jeffrey Weston is a wealthy mid–forties sales manager in Seattle. Bridgette Davis is a mid–forties drug addict in Baltimore. Twenty years ago, they were a couple. Jeffrey's brief dalliance with cocaine led Bridgette-an innocent grade schoolteacher-to dark places: drug addiction, a life of poverty, and raising their child, Catherine, whom Jeffrey never learned about.

Catherine-a girl of grit-has survived several stints in foster care because of her mom's addictions.

Jeffrey must confront his past and what he was-and wasn't-responsible for. He must also balance what he owes to his past-including unresolved guilt over a failed adoption-with what he owes to his present, that includes a successful marriage, work, and life.

Distant Relative explores this balance, the mistakes that one makes being resurrected decades later, and the choices you make. Can you make something right years later? Would you make the same choices?

-- Joseph Helensky