Many thanks to Barbara Bos for publishing this essay. Women Writers, Women’s Books does a wonderful job helping promote authors and their books.

You can be a disaster and still get invited to the fish fry!

As a reader, I’ve always been drawn to stories where healing doesn’t  arrive as an epiphany or a makeover montage. As a writer, I wasn’t interested in giving Serenity a wise mentor or a fairy-tale romance to solve her problems. I wanted to surround her with people carrying their own scars and peculiarities. 

Through a cast of offbeat locals, Serenity is gently nudged toward everything she’s spent years dodging. Even the ghosts and pirate lore that haunt the island mirror her emotional state: unquiet, searching, unresolved. Each character Serenity encounters on Ocracoke serves a quiet purpose in her emotional healing, although none of them are there to “fix” her. Instead, their authenticity and offbeat wisdom provide a kind of emotional ballast, grounding her in a reality she’s long avoided.

You can read why I decided to fill my novel with unlikely friendships and eccentric characters on Women Writers, Women’s Books.