A love story of passion and faith Friends for a Thousand Years It’s hardly ever easy to move a teenage child to a new town-much less a new state-when they are in high school. Leaving San Diego was unbearably hard for quirky fifteen-year-old Clara Simmons. She’d grown up on the beaches of southern California, had a fast-paced lifestyle, and life-long friends, including a boyfriend named Chet. Clara soon learned that life is a perpetual cycle of change. There were no beaches in small-town Lizella, not 10 miles southwest of metropolitan Macon, Georgia. Just when she thought she’d move back to California, her resistance shifted to acceptance. Her new neighbor, 16-year-old Jeremy Gorman, cast new light on living in the country. Missing the sandy beaches was no longer an issue-the Gorman family lake would be just fine. She spent more time there than at her home across the street.