Strides Between Us

by Marc Cianfarani

One race took everything from him.
Fifteen years will decide what's left.

Jake Clark was never supposed to make it.
A walk-on chasing runners who were faster, stronger, already chosen.
But he found a way in.

Until one wrong step ended it all.

What follows isn't a comeback. It's a collapse.

Strides Between Us follows Jake from
college tracks to city streets, from promise
to disappearance, and to the moment
when starting again means facing everything
he tried to outrun.

A powerful story about loss, fatherhood,
and the people who wait for us to come back.

ebook

Published April 18, 2026

About the author

Marc Cianfarani is a Canadian writer whose work blends emotional depth, quiet resilience, and a deep curiosity about the lives we carry beneath the surface. For more than thirty years, Marc worked as an advocate reviewing medical evidence and supporting individuals through some of the most difficult chapters of their lives. Those decades of listening to stories of loss, hope, and second chances shaped both his worldview and his writing.

His debut novel, Strides Between Us, grew from a simple image that stayed with him: a man standing alone with a pair of running shoes, caught between who he was and who he might become again. As Marc wrote the book, he found himself immersed in Jake’s journey, often experiencing the emotional beats as if he were living them alongside his character. That process, exhausting at times, exhilarating at others formed the heart of the story: the quiet, human moments where identity is rebuilt one small choice at a time.

Marc is deeply interested in the psychology of resilience, the way memory shapes who we become, and the unspoken burdens many people carry without recognition. His writing aims to give voice to those experiences and to remind readers that any of us can find ourselves standing at a crossroads, one misfortune away from becoming the “Jake” in our own lives.

When he’s not writing, Marc can often be found on the trails around Toronto, reflecting, reading, or walking with his whippet, Dolce who inspired one of the novel’s most beloved scenes.

Strides Between Us is his first novel.