“It’s been so long since college. Phil seemed to love me. He said the words at least but he didn’t love me quite enough, I guess. I miss him so, so much, way too much. He is the only one so far, the only one I think about, but he is gone, gone, gone. Mom made sure of that. Before that, puppy love. When was my last date? I can hardly remember his name.”
– an excerpt from the book
ARPress is honored to publish The Secret Guy (A New England Diary) by Joseph T. Coleman. This book is now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the ARPress website.
In today’s world, where so much of our attention is pulled toward breaking news alerts, digital feeds, and the endless race for more, it feels rare to pause and notice the small, tender moments that actually shape our lives. Yet those everyday details, the quiet prayers at a kitchen table, the ache of loneliness, the joy of finding love when least expected, remain some of the most universal truths. That is exactly what Joseph T. Coleman captures in his moving novel, The Secret Guy (A New England Diary).
The story unfolds through the fictional diary of Sarah Jane Powell, a woman navigating life, love, and heartbreak in New England. On the surface, Sarah’s reflections may sound ordinary, she worries about her job, her relationships, her family, but Coleman’s gift is in showing us how extraordinary the ordinary can be. Her struggles echo so many of our own: searching for belonging, wrestling with loss, and cherishing fleeting joys before they vanish.
What makes the book even more poignant is its intimacy. Written as a diary, we are not just reading a story, we are being trusted with Sarah’s innermost thoughts. We laugh with her, ache with her, and celebrate alongside her. And then, in the epilogue, Coleman delivers one of the most heart-wrenching turns: Sarah’s great love, Roy, dies in a tragic school shooting. Suddenly, the novel feels less like distant fiction and more like a mirror held up to the world we live in today, where grief, resilience, and hope intertwine daily.
Joseph T. Coleman has spent a lifetime listening to the voices around him, especially women’s perspectives, and to the subtle rhythms of everyday life. His heroine is strong, flawed, funny, and deeply human. Through her voice, Coleman invites us to reflect on our own inner diaries: the stories we carry quietly but rarely share.
The author grew up near Buffalo, NY, and graduated from the State University of New York at Binghamton, where he was inspired by an elective entitled Themes of Drama, taught by Professor George Wellwarth. Following college, Coleman spent many years in New England on work assignments. He knows the places he describes intimately. He has long held a desire to make an eloquent appeal to emotion through storytelling. Late in life, encouraged by someone who appeared in a dream, the story told here began to flow and eventually found its completion.
In an age of noise and distraction, The Secret Guy (A New England Diary) reminds us to slow down. To notice the rituals that hold us steady. To honor love in all its fragile forms. And to remember, as Sarah’s story shows us, that even in the face of unimaginable loss, the human spirit finds ways to endure, and even to begin again. Coleman, in giving voice to Sarah Jane Powell, has crafted a heroine who is both specific and universal: a woman of New England, yet also a woman of anywhere, of anytime, who teaches us that the ordinary is never truly ordinary. In her diary, we find not only her story, but fragments of our own.
The Secret Guy (A New England Diary) by Joseph T. Coleman is now available for purchase via the ARPress Bookstore.