Books for wilderness, wonder, justice, and becoming

The “When She…” Series

Beginning with When She Said My Name, this planned sapphic series follows Julia St. James and Sophia Moretti across a lifetime. Their story moves beyond falling in love into marriage, family, illness, advocacy, caregiving, grief, aging, and the daily decision to keep choosing one another. It is an expansive story about being truly seen—and about the families we build around the people who see us.

The Broken Crucible Series

At the end of the 1980s, a band of twenty-something misfits is chasing a fading rock-and-roll dream through the American Midwest. When a young woman disappears after one of their shows, the members of Broken Crucible become suspects, reluctant investigators, and eventually enemies of something far larger than they imagined. Planned as a fifteen-book mystery saga, the series combines music, found family, changing American culture, and the moral cost of fighting systems that were never designed to protect you.

Tinker & Trinkets

In mid-1990s Digby, Nova Scotia, prairie-born Bennett Stewart takes over a failing antique and repair shop in a cove off the Bay of Fundy. Inside is a strange machine capable of finding what has been lost—but never without demanding something in return. With salt air, old feuds, overlooked histories, unexpected relationships, and the sea herself pressing against every page, this is a story about repair, belonging, and the cost of finally finding home.

Shards of Grace

Twenty-three-year-old Micah Carter is fighting to become guardian of his three-year-old half-sister after their mother’s death. Their new landlord, Margaret Foster, wants little to do with either of them—until a small child begins crossing the distance between two wounded households. Set in Chatham, Shards of Grace explores foster care, aging, prejudice, intergenerational silence, and a family created not through blood, but through fierce and unexpected love.

The Other Side of Mercy

When her estranged mother’s dementia forces an urgent care crisis, a woman who has spent years escaping her family’s controlling expectations finds herself confronting an inflexible healthcare system, complicated loyalties, and the unsettling realization that her own children may be inheriting the very burdens she fought to escape.

Across three decades, the seemingly unrelated lives of a controversial church dissenter, a person he mentored, and the family she has chosen gradually converge, revealing how acts of love, prejudice, and ordinary human kindness can shape lives long after their names have faded from memory.