Others are made quietly, every day, without witnesses.
Alex Mercer has built his life on discipline… on control, restraint, and the belief that precision keeps things clean. Clara Hale has built hers on composure… on clarity, responsibility, and the careful management of power in rooms that rarely forgive hesitation. When their lives intersect through proximity rather than intention, neither is looking for connection, and neither believes in accidents.
What begins as a professional alignment becomes something harder to define and harder to refuse. Not passion. Not impulse. Something steadies. Something that asks to be chosen again and again, even when the cost is visible.
What We Chose is a quiet, emotionally exact novel about love that does not arrive as rescue or revelation, but as practice. It is a story about boundaries held, risks named, and the courage it takes to remain when leaving would be easier. Above all, it is a meditation on the truth that love endures not because it overwhelms us, but because we decide… deliberately… to keep it.
John Berry was born in Rhodesia. He lived there for six years and then emigrated to Durban, South Africa. He went to Marist Brothers College. After matriculation, he did national service as a paratrooper and fought in the Angolan war in 1975. He traveled extensively, lived in England for two years, then emigrated to Brisbane, Australia. He spends his time researching and writing fiction stories.