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Without Him: Two Brothers, Two Divergent Paths, One Unbreakable Bond
Faith may guide you, but only love brings you home.
Brighton and Baéz are half-brothers forever linked by a miraculous moment on the frozen surface of Lake Aspetuck. In the heart of a deadly snowstorm, one brother plunges into darkness, and the other risks everything to pull him back to the light. That perilous episode echoes across their lives as they take vastly different paths through the chaos and complexity of the 21st century.
Brighton Bethune becomes a global a professional tennis champion, an Army Ranger haunted by war, and a celebrated film actor grappling with the cost of fame. Baéz Honor, grounded by the spiritual teachings of their prophetic grandmother Nonnie, follows a quieter but no less meaningful path, exploring the mysterious gift of healing he discovered on that fateful day under the ice.
As the brothers navigate ambition, trauma, love, and legacy, they find themselves confronting the moral decay of the modern world, including sports corruption, spiritual exploitation, media frenzy, and the silencing of truth. Yet through every storm, their enduring affection for each other remains a lifeline, and their exuberant embrace of this imperfect world guides their fate.
Without Him is a sweeping and intimate novel about brotherhood, identity, healing, and the sacred ties that bind us across time, distance, and belief. Told over three decades, it is a story of two men shaped by one impossible moment and the lives they build in its aftermath.
Brighton and Baéz are half-brothers forever linked by a miraculous moment on the frozen surface of Lake Aspetuck. In the heart of a deadly snowstorm, one brother plunges into darkness, and the other risks everything to pull him back to the light. That perilous episode echoes across their lives as they take vastly different paths through the chaos and complexity of the 21st century.
Brighton Bethune becomes a global a professional tennis champion, an Army Ranger haunted by war, and a celebrated film actor grappling with the cost of fame. Baéz Honor, grounded by the spiritual teachings of their prophetic grandmother Nonnie, follows a quieter but no less meaningful path, exploring the mysterious gift of healing he discovered on that fateful day under the ice.
As the brothers navigate ambition, trauma, love, and legacy, they find themselves confronting the moral decay of the modern world, including sports corruption, spiritual exploitation, media frenzy, and the silencing of truth. Yet through every storm, their enduring affection for each other remains a lifeline, and their exuberant embrace of this imperfect world guides their fate.
Without Him is a sweeping and intimate novel about brotherhood, identity, healing, and the sacred ties that bind us across time, distance, and belief. Told over three decades, it is a story of two men shaped by one impossible moment and the lives they build in its aftermath.
312 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 20, 2025
21 people are currently reading
8 people want to read
About the author
Lindsay Law
2 books8 followersLindsay Law has produced scores of television plays and dozens of films, in addition to a pair of productions on Broadway. Many of these works have been nominated for Emmys, Tonys, and Oscars. He was the Executive Producer for the PBS drama series, AMERICAN PLAYHOUSE, from 1981 to 1995. He was the President of Fox Searchlight Pictures from 1995 to 2000. He lives in Litchfield County, Connecticut.
If you enjoyed this book and the time you spent with these characters, help spread the word on-line, at your local bookshop, and directly with your friends. The author would enjoy hearing about your experience while reading this book and invites you to ask any questions you may have about this story and his story.
If you enjoyed this book and the time you spent with these characters, help spread the word on-line, at your local bookshop, and directly with your friends. The author would enjoy hearing about your experience while reading this book and invites you to ask any questions you may have about this story and his story.
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September 12, 2025
Lindsay Law's latest novel, “Without Him,” is a sprawling novel spanning 30 years in the lives of two brothers where devotion, loyalty, and the bonds of friendship and family are tested. The story delves into themes of fate, family, and faith weaving competitive sports, advertising, war and military service, fame and the film industry, together with notions spirituality that range from faith healing to commercialized religion. With a distinguished career in theater, television, and motion pictures, Law brings to the page a master’s instinct for story. His novels, with a Dickensian sweep, cover the landscape of human endeavor, revealing the fractures and fragility of the spirit, with a mediation on the nature of understanding and acceptance.
His first novel, “The Orphan from Shepherd’s Keep” focused on gay identity within a context of art and religion. Same-sex attraction and familial love again underpin the story but here spirituality becomes a key theme. Ties that bind and the presence of flawed fathers link both novels.
Traumatic childhood incidents set both stories in motion. “Without Him” opens with an incident that will affect both their futures in far different ways. Baéz Honor having fallen through the ice in a raging snowstorm is brought back to life by his half-brother Brighton Bethune who pulls him from the icy waters and administers the breath of life. Considering his time under the ice, it is a near miracle of recovery. Baéz is deeply influenced by his grandmother, Nonnie, a healer with ultimate faith in the power of God to heal wounds both physical and spiritual. The miracle of the rescue deepens Baéz’s faith in the power of God and leads him to a spiritual calling.
Brighton, gifted with beauty and exceptional athleticism, takes a far different path. Still, Nonnie’s faith and encouragement during a key tennis match will see him to becoming a renowned tennis champion. In military service where he excels as a leader in a questionable war. Captured and tortured, in a grueling scene, he recovers and like a modern day Audie Murphy, becomes a motion picture celebrity.
Baéz, meanwhile has developed a successful religious calling, and is comfortable with himself as a gay man. Brighton’s conflicts, however, will mount. He suffers addictions as the result of war wounds. His sudden notoriety, accomplishments that have garnered public acclaim become sources of internal conflict. There is, of course, far more to the story, but at its heart lie sacrifice and self-discovery— that unfolds in swift, unexpected turns that keep the reader off balance and enthralled.
His first novel, “The Orphan from Shepherd’s Keep” focused on gay identity within a context of art and religion. Same-sex attraction and familial love again underpin the story but here spirituality becomes a key theme. Ties that bind and the presence of flawed fathers link both novels.
Traumatic childhood incidents set both stories in motion. “Without Him” opens with an incident that will affect both their futures in far different ways. Baéz Honor having fallen through the ice in a raging snowstorm is brought back to life by his half-brother Brighton Bethune who pulls him from the icy waters and administers the breath of life. Considering his time under the ice, it is a near miracle of recovery. Baéz is deeply influenced by his grandmother, Nonnie, a healer with ultimate faith in the power of God to heal wounds both physical and spiritual. The miracle of the rescue deepens Baéz’s faith in the power of God and leads him to a spiritual calling.
Brighton, gifted with beauty and exceptional athleticism, takes a far different path. Still, Nonnie’s faith and encouragement during a key tennis match will see him to becoming a renowned tennis champion. In military service where he excels as a leader in a questionable war. Captured and tortured, in a grueling scene, he recovers and like a modern day Audie Murphy, becomes a motion picture celebrity.
Baéz, meanwhile has developed a successful religious calling, and is comfortable with himself as a gay man. Brighton’s conflicts, however, will mount. He suffers addictions as the result of war wounds. His sudden notoriety, accomplishments that have garnered public acclaim become sources of internal conflict. There is, of course, far more to the story, but at its heart lie sacrifice and self-discovery— that unfolds in swift, unexpected turns that keep the reader off balance and enthralled.
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