Author investigates three generations of family’s arranged marriages, including her own

An intimate exploration of trauma and self-discovery in tender memoir, Afterword by Adriani Trigiani

OMAHA, NE – Peek behind the curtain of one woman’s journey across three generations of her Italian-American family in this complex story of arranged marriage, immigration, international adoption, and self-discovery in the award-winning memoir After Italy: A Family Memoir of Arranged Marriage (Bordighera Press, May 14, 2024) by Anna Monardo.

Author of The Courtyard of Dreams and Falling in Love with Natassia, Anna Monardo pivots from her career as an established fictional author to reveal the truths she discovered while investigating her family’s story. Starting in Southern Italy, 1948 leading to the U.S. and igniting a family feud so volatile it leads to separation, domestic violence, and an inescapable legacy of fractured love. At 39, caught in her own failing “marriage of convenience,” Anna looks to her family’s immigration history as she charts her personal path to self-discovery and the adoption of her son. Anna’s story speaks to those breaking the cycle of family trauma, the cultural conflicts among immigrant families, and the risks we take when going against family expectations.

About the book: Like her grandmother and mother, Anna marries quickly, knowing little about her groom. And like her maternal elders, she struggles in marriage. Determined to break the cycle of marital sadness, Anna sets out to investigate her family’s history, from their Calabrian mountain village and WWII survival, to their immigrant life in a Pittsburgh steel town, hoping to better understand the underlying forces that led to her own failure in marriage: Was it an Old World curse or a multi-generational trauma? What was gained and what was lost when the family’s Italian heritage intersected with American ideals? In time, she arrives at her own definition of domestic love by creating a path to the hopeful adoption of her son.

After Italy

Anna Monardo | May 14, 2024 | Bordighera Press | Memoir 

Paperback | 978-1-59954-216-4 | $22.00

Anna Monardo grew up in Pittsburgh, with strong ties to her Calabrian family. Her first novel, The Courtyard of Dreams (Doubleday), set largely in Southern Italy, was translated into German, Norwegian, and Danish; featured in the Selected Shorts reading series at Symphony Space in New York City; and nominated for a PEN/Hemingway Award and recommended for the National Book Critics Circle Awards. Learn more about her at her website.

Photo credit to Chris Holtmeier Foton-Foto.

 

In an interview, Anna Monardo can discuss:

  • How Anna recounts her family’s real history and the emotional journey of sharing this intimate story
  • How contemporary global migration hasn’t changed over the past 50 years and the immigration to the United States impactfully influences one family’s decisions
  • How the story of arranged marriage plays as a cautionary tale in modern society
  • How therapy plays a pivotal role in Anna’s journey of self-exploration and emotional healing
  • How Anna leverages her prowess as a fiction writer to craft a compelling and deeply personal non-fiction account

Advanced Praise for After Italy

Anna Monardo’s story is one of strength and vulnerability, the two chambers of the immigrant heart.  

  —Adriani Trigiani, The Good Left Undone and Big Stone Gap

This beautifully written story of three generations of marriage is a page-turner. Monardo’s honest and reflective memoir reveals intergenerational patterns as intricate as Italian lace. This family story has something to teach us all.

            —Mary Pipher, A Life in Light and Reviving Ophelia

As an Italian-American like Anna Monardo, I relished every detail of her family’s story from Italy to Pittsburgh. But you don’t have to share that heritage to love this exploration of love and marriage, family and motherhood. In After Italy, Monardo is a generous, wise guide into the past and into her own present.

                                           —Ann Hood, The Italian Wife and The Stolen Child

In After Italy, Monardo crafts a moving, compelling, and gorgeously written memoir that is part cultural exploration and part emotional inventory. After Italy is a kind of translation, taking big questions involving society and self and relating them in the universal language of deeply explored personal experience.  

Sue William Silverman, Acetylene Torch Songs and How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences 

To be a woman in an Italian family,” Anna Monardo writes, “is to live in a courtyard, an enclosed world–it is safety, confinement, beauty, deprivation, fulfillment, wretched, wonderful, inescapable.” Her remarkable memoir, After Italy, is a quest to unravel a lineage of broken hearts so she might mend her own. Weaving research with dream with fine embroidered language, Monardo confronts the damage of Old World “patriarchal imperatives” upon three generations of vibrant Calabrian women, including arranged marriage, and the false narratives within the American Dream. After Italy is a story of desire, disappointment, perseverance and liberation, a reminder that love follows its own path, and may arrive unbidden on the salt ocean air, or the smile on an adopted boy’s face. Poignant. Brave. Inspiring. Brava!

— Harrison Candelaria Fletcher, Finding Querencia: Essays from In Between  

After Italy is an epic family history that spans generations, crosses oceans, and excavates layer upon layer of buried sorrows and secrets. It’s also a profoundly personal story told with intimate precision and in exquisite emotional detail. How did Anna Monardo pull off this magical double feat? By understanding that it’s all one big love story. Even when love is absent or imperfect or too lightly or tightly held, it’s always the main event. Monardo knows this intuitively and has written a beautiful and captivating book. I can’t wait to read it again.

Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects Of Discussion  

An Interview with

Anna Monardo

1. What made you decide it was time to tell the full story of your family’s experiences?

I recently found a note I wrote in my journal in 2008. My second novel, Falling In Love with Natassia, was published and I was figuring out what to focus on next: new fiction or a family memoir?  I had notes for both projects, but about the memoir, I wrote this in my journal: “That memoir is the book I’ve been afraid of all my life.” When I found that note I knew I didn’t have a choice. I had to move toward what frightened me. I had written some of my family’s immigration story in my first semi-autobiographical novel, The Courtyard of Dreams, but now it was time to write the full story— the true story—about everything I’d fictionalized in Courtyard. 

When my mother read Courtyard, she said, “You killed the mother.” And, in fact, the fictionalized mother does die “off-stage.” Within the plotline, her daughter and husband grieve for the mother, but the main conflict is the volatile relationship between daughter and father. With the mother “off-stage,” I didn’t have to write much about the parents’ marriage. In our family, there were aspects of my parents’ and grandparents’ relationships that were never discussed, and fiction allowed me to avoid digging in. As a daughter, I felt I was respecting my family’s privacy, but as a writer, I was being cowardly. Now, it was time for me to step up.             

2. What kind of research and interviews did you do to gather information for your memoir?

 After our father died, my brother and I found a trove of his Italian documents: birth certificate, passport, and even his elementary-school report cards—pagelle—which were little booklets. His 2nd– and 3rd-grade pagelle were made of heavy, cream-colored stock and the covers were embossed with the blue-and-red insignia for the Kingdom of Italy. The 4th-grade report card was made of a lesser stock, and it didn’t feel as good in my hands. The cover was red, with artwork depicting a rising block of interconnected towers—nationalistic. Fasces. No more Kingdom of Italy! The 4th-grade report card was issued by the Ministry of National Education, and printed on the cover in thick letters was Opera Nazionale Balilla, the Fascist Youth organization. 

In my right hand I was holding the Kingdom of Italy report cards, and in my left, the Fascist-era card. I looked from one hand to the other, and realized that within the course of one summer break, from my dad’s 3rd grade to 4th, the dictatorship moved in. Less than ten years later, he was drafted into Mussolini’s army. 

For my mother’s story, I filled a suitcase with her old photographs and went to Pittsburgh, where three of the cousins she’d grown up with went through the pictures with me, identifying people and places I didn’t recognize. We talked for hours. Two of the cousins were okay with the idea of my writing this memoir, but one cousin was not. “Your grandmother always told us you don’t go around talking about family stuff.”  I was grateful for her honest reaction. It forced me to rigorously question myself about whether or not it was necessary to publish our story. Obviously, I decided to publish it, but I needed to examine that decision closely. 

3. How does “After Italy” compare to your previous novels? How was the writing process different?

The novels and the memoir are similar in that they are all narratives built scene by scene. One difference is with dialogue—in memoir, the quotations are remembered; in fiction, they are created. For the memoir, the challenge was to craft dialogue that sounded like the specific voices of people I knew well. Writing fiction, I’m literally putting words into my characters’ mouths. Beyond that, writing the memoir was similar to writing fiction in that, with both, I’m trying to excavate whatever is going on in my heart. The challenge, when writing to explore emotion, is to make each character’s inner life accessible to the reader. 

4. What kind of impact has your Italian-American heritage had on your life?

Though my Italian-American heritage isn’t my only heritage, it’s probably the most significant one. My Italian ancestry is so pervasive within me, I don’t even see it; it just is. But I was also shaped largely by the late 1960s and early 1970s, when I was an adolescent, just beginning to pay attention to the news and the world outside our home. Vietnam, MLK’s assassination, Kent State, Woodstock. The call for protest against injustice was powerful—and it was the opposite of the silent bella figura that a well-brought-up Italian American girl was supposed to emulate. The call for personal freedom was in the music, language, clothes, and I embraced that, too. It was thrilling. I was becoming an individual defined by forces beyond my family; and yet, the times assured me I was correct in doing so. 

5. How has your life changed since the events of your book?

Having After Italy accepted for publication by Bordighera Press, which publishes literature and scholarship of the Italian diaspora, means a great deal to me. Writing this book, telling my family’s true story—the darkness and the light—was lonely at times, but with publication, so many beautiful connections have come about. Readers are prompted to tell me their own family stories, and it’s a privilege to hear them. Through Bordighera, I’m connecting with other Italian American writers and their amazing books. My father used to say, “Tutto il mondo `e paese.” All the world is one big village. I feel that now, more than ever.  

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Debut historical fiction novel chronicles change and resilience among the tobacco fields of 1950s North Carolina

RALEIGH, North Carolina – Leo Daughtry’s debut novel, “Talmadge Farm,” transports readers to the tobacco fields of 1950s North Carolina. “Talmadge Farm” (Story Merchant Books, June 4, 2024) reflects on the dreams and struggles of the American South, made more poignant by the author’s personal experiences growing up among the tobacco fields of Sampson County, North Carolina, during periods of turbulent societal change.

It’s 1957, and tobacco is king. Wealthy landowner Gordon Talmadge enjoys the lavish lifestyle he inherited but doesn’t like getting his hands dirty; he leaves that to the two sharecroppers – one white, one Black – who farm his tobacco but have bigger dreams for their own children. While Gordon takes no interest in the lives of his tenant farmers, a brutal attack between his son and the sharecropper children sets off a chain of events that leaves no one unscathed. Over the span of a decade, Gordon struggles to hold on to his family’s legacy as the old order makes way for a New South.

“Talmadge Farm” is a sweeping drama that follows three unforgettable families navigating the changing culture of North Carolina at a pivotal moment in history. A love letter to the American South, the novel is a story of resilience, hope, and family – both lost and found.

“Talmadge Farm”

Leo Daughtry | June 4, 2024 | Story Merchant Books | Historical Fiction/Southern Fiction

Paperback | ISBN 978-1-970157-43-7 | $14.99

Also available as an ebook 

About The Author

Leo Daughtry is a life-long resident of North Carolina. He grew up among the tobacco fields of Sampson County which served as inspiration for his debut novel, “Talmadge Farm.” After graduating from Wake Forest University and its School of Law, he established a private law practice in Smithfield, N.C. He was a member of the N.C. House and Senate for 28 years, including serving as House Majority Leader and House Minority Leader. When not practicing law, Leo enjoys spending time in Atlantic Beach with his wife and daughters. 

 

 

Praise for “Talmadge Farm”

“Set in North Carolina in the 1950s and 60s, Leo Daughtry’s story gives readers a cast of flawed characters that elicit sympathy, anger, love and hate. The Talmadges, landed gentry, and their two sharecropper families try to adjust to the changing political, economic and social landscape of the decade. Gordon Talmadge commits one mistake after another, ultimately destroying the legacy handed to him, as his loyal wife Claire stands by his side while the sharecropper families – one black, one white – are ultimately driven off the farm for better and for worse.  A page turner.” — George Kolber, author of Thrown Upon the World, and writer/producer of Miranda’s Victim

In this stirring novel, Leo Daughtry creates a big, complicated portrait of family, place, race, class, and greed. Set in North Carolina, Talmadge Farm tells the story of three intertwined families. Daughtry delves deep into the heart of his characters. You’ll almost forget that you don’t know them personally; this story feels that real.” — Judy Goldman, author of Child: A Memoir and Together: A Memoir of a Marriage and a Medical Mishap

“Talmadge Farm is a classic. Through the lives of a farm owner’s family and their sharecropping tenants, Leo Daughtry weaves a story about the emerging South. This is a story of triumph and tragedy, of good and evil, and finally reconciliation. A true morality play.” — Gene Hoots, former tobacco executive and author of Going Down Tobacco Road

In an interview, Leo Daughtry can discuss:

  • How his experiences growing up on a tobacco farm in North Carolina during the transformative 1950s and ‘60s shaped elements of his debut novel, “Talmadge Farm”
  • The evolution of societal norms, like segregation, women’s liberation and the decline of sharecropping, and how he incorporated these important shifts into the story
  • His deep-rooted connections to the region and how his novel serves as a love letter to the American South
  • The evolving landscape of tobacco farming methodologies during the 1950s and beyond — including the consolidation of small farms, the introduction of new technology and the increased use of migrant workers 
  • The 60th anniversary of the Surgeon General’s report on the harmfulness of smoking and witnessing the report’s impact firsthand 
  • Navigating sensitive topics like privilege, racial injustice and autonomy while crafting the storyline with empathy and humanity
  • His transition from successful careers in law and the military to fiction writing

An Interview with

Leo Daughtry

What inspired you to write “Talmadge Farm?” 

I lived through changing times, particularly the 1950s when there was nearly complete segregation in the South, especially in rural areas. Sharecropping was common, and women did not divorce in those times because it was considered demeaning, a failure. Then in the 1960s, everything began to change. Sharecropping disappeared, birth control entered the picture, and women could live life with more freedom and less dependence on men.

Can you tell us more about your family history and its connection to North Carolina and tobacco? How did this environment influence your writing? Beyond the direct associations with tobacco and North Carolina, are there more subtle aspects of your upbringing and family history that influenced your writing? 

Tobacco was king in North Carolina. People practically worshiped it. Where I grew up, it put food on the table. Cotton was more up and down, but tobacco provided financial stability, not just for farmers but for the whole community. My family grew tobacco, sold fertilizer and seed, and managed a tobacco auction. It was our whole world.

You have had a successful career as a lawyer and an Air Force Captain before that. What prompted you to pursue writing fiction? 

I always had the idea for this particular story in my head. The 1950s and 1960s were two decades that changed the world, and a farm with sharecroppers is a bit of a pressure cooker environment. You have the farmowner’s family – in many cases people of wealth and entitlement – living just down the driveway from the sharecropping families. The sharecroppers were poor and had limited options, so they felt stuck living on a farm that didn’t belong to them doing backbreaking work with no way out. It’s a situation that lends itself to drama: families with major differences in class/race/socioeconomic status living in such close proximity to one another.

How has the landscape of tobacco farming changed, and how did you incorporate those changes into the plot of “Talmadge Farm?”  

Probably the biggest change was the shift from sharecropping to migrant workers. Today, tobacco farmers are large corporations that use migrant workers as laborers. But in the 1950s, farming relied almost completely on sharecropping, which was a hard life. Tobacco farming is physically demanding work, and sharecroppers needed the help of all family members to complete the various steps – planting, seeding, suckering, priming, worming, and cropping – of harvesting the crop. Sharecroppers at one farm would help sharecroppers at the neighboring farm because they did not have the resources to hire extra people. In the 1950s, sharecroppers were unable to get credit anywhere but at the general store and maybe the feed store. They truly lived hand to mouth all the time, only able to pay their debts after the tobacco auction in the fall. Hence the phrase “sold my soul to the company store.” Sharecroppers often turned to moonshining as a way to make extra money.

As I describe in the novel, sharecropping began to disappear in the 1960s as children of sharecroppers started taking advantage of new opportunities that the changing society offered. Migrant workers took over the labor of farming. In addition to labor changes, new machinery improved the industry. N.C. State was instrumental in developing advances in the farming world. Legislation changed and farmers were allowed to have acreage allotments outside of the land they owned. I touch on all of these changes in the novel.

Are any of the characters in your book based on real people? 

Not really. The closest characters to real people in my life are the characters of Jake and Bobby Lee. Jake is a Black teenager who wants to escape farm life and ends up running away to Philadelphia to become a success. Bobby Lee is a young Black soldier stationed at Fort Bragg. On the farm where I grew up, there was a Black sharecropping family with four sons, the youngest of whom was my age. We were very good friends. All of the boys were bright and athletic, could fix anything, yet were limited in their opportunities. They didn’t have a school to go to or a job to look forward to. Their only options were to stay on the farm or join the army. The character of Gordon, while not based on any one person, reminds me of a lot of men I knew who did not treat women well, who were racist, who enjoyed the status quo and were resistant to anything that threatened their way of life.

In addition to the changing tobacco farming methodologies, the 1950s ushered in a period of profound social change, marked notably by the introduction of credit cards. How did these outside factors impact farming, and in what ways did they inform the development of the plot in “Talmadge Farm?”

In the novel, Gordon is the president of the local bank, yet he resists the advances in the banking industry, including credit cards and car loans and the incursion of national banks into rural communities. Gordon’s father, who founded the bank, was a brilliant man adept at navigating the bank through changing times, but Gordon simply doesn’t have the smarts to see what’s coming, and no one can get through to him. He’d rather play a round of golf than look at the balance sheet. So between the changing farming landscape and the evolution of new banking practices, Gordon is getting squeezed from both sides of the ledger as it were. It proves to be his downfall. I think that’s one of the great strengths of the plot – how everything is tied to everything else.

How did other social changes – including race relations – impact the tobacco industry and your writing?

In the 1960s, the minority labor pool available to farm tobacco began to dry up as kids started moving up north or joining the army. We see this in the novel through the characters of Jake and Bobby Lee. Ella is another example. She’s the Black teenage daughter of a sharecropping family, and she hates farm work. She ends up enrolling in a secretarial program and getting a job at the county clerk’s office, opportunities that were unheard of in the 1950s.

The Surgeon General issued a groundbreaking report 60 years ago on the harmful effects of smoking. How did this pivotal moment influence your approach to writing? What firsthand impacts did you observe while coming of age among the tobacco farms of North Carolina? 

Most people where I lived didn’t believe the Surgeon General was accurate in that report. Most everyone smoked. People viewed it as the government coming in and trying to tell us what to do. A prevailing theme was that the government was trying to get rid of tobacco but wasn’t doing anything about alcohol. One notable exception I remember is that good athletes in the 1950s were discouraged from smoking, so maybe the coaches were on to something that the rest of us weren’t ready to hear yet. In the novel, we see Gordon’s constant frustration at what he views as interference from the government, while other characters, mostly ones involved in the medical community, begin to appreciate that smoking was bad for one’s health.

How did you address the plight of women in the novel? 

In the 1950s, women were very limited in their opportunities. There were very few professional opportunities for women outside of teaching, nursing, and working as a secretary. Divorce was scandalous and unheard of in those days. We see lots of examples of this in the novel. But of all the characters, it’s two of the women who have the clearest moral compasses: Claire, Gordon’s wife, and Ivy, the Talmadges’ maid. Both of them see more clearly than anyone else where Gordon is going off the deep end, but they are nearly powerless to do anything about it.

The novel touches on themes of privilege, racial injustice, and the struggle for autonomy and dignity. How did you navigate these sensitive topics while crafting the narrative, and what challenges did you encounter along the way? 

I lived through this time, and I witnessed first-hand people who enjoyed privilege that was unearned as well as racial injustices that denied Black people access to the same opportunities as white people. And yet most people – white and Black – were simply striving to make a better life in an honorable way.  I tried to infuse all of the characters in “Talmadge Farm” with dignity and humanity, even Gordon, who finally gets his comeuppance in the end.

The novel is described as a “love letter to the American South.” Can you expand on this sentiment?

As I look back on my childhood, in many ways it was a wonderful time to grow up. It was safe. We never locked our doors. Our whole life existed just in that area; it was a long trip traveling to Raleigh, which was only 60 minutes away. There was a strong sense of community, of church, of taking care of each other.

Ultimately, what do you hope readers will take away from “Talmadge Farm?” 

I mainly hope they will be entertained by a great story about three families who called Talmadge Farm home during the tumultuous times of the 1950s-1960s.

What impact do you aspire for the book to have on discussions about history, identity, and resilience in the American South? 

We have now moved on from the post-Civil War time and the Jim Crow period to a place where we’re beginning to find our identity as a state and region. In the 1950s, North Carolina was one of the poorest states in the country. Our economy was dependent primarily on tobacco farming but also textiles and furniture making, none of which paid a living wage. Segregation was rampant, and minorities had few opportunities to improve their lot in life. Our university graduates who studied computer science and technology ended up leaving the state to find jobs in those industries. That all began to change in the 1960s with the enforcement of desegregation, the advent of birth control, and changes in farming regulations and methods. Another major turning point in our state’s economy was when Governor Hodges convinced IBM to move from New York to North Carolina as part of the development of the Research Triangle Park. A large number of technology and pharmaceutical companies followed suit, and there was a ripple effect that extended across the state, even to areas like Hobbsfield, our fictional town in “Talmadge Farm.” My hope is that reading this novel will help people understand how we got to where we are today.

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Cracking the immigration impasse: Author-educator weaves tales of humanity to expose the real “crisis” at the U.S.-Mexico border

It was family separation and “kids in cages” that drove Sarah Towle to the U.S. southern border. On discovering the many-headed hydra that is the U.S. immigration system – and the heroic determination of those caught under its knee – she could never look away again. “Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands” (She Writes Press, June 18, 2024) charts Sarah’s journey from outrage to activism to abolition as she exposes, layer by “broken” layer, the global deterrence to detention to deportation complex that is failing everyone — save the profiteers and demagogues who benefit from it. 

Deftly weaving together oral storytelling, history, and memoir, Sarah illustrates how the U.S. has led the retreat from post-WWII commitments to protecting human rights. Yet within the web of normalized cruelty, she finds hope and inspiration in the extraordinary acts of ordinary people who prove, every day, there is a better way. By amplifying their voices and celebrating their efforts, Sarah reveals that we can welcome with dignity those most in need of safety and compassion. In unmasking the real root causes of the so-called “crisis” in human migration, she urges us to act before we travel much farther down our current course — one which history will not soon forgive, or forget.

Renowned filmmaker, storyteller, and historian Ken Burns praised Towle’s work, saying: “Today, the issue of immigration is just an argument, not a subject. But Sarah Towle has obliterated the dead-end arguments and transformed them into riveting, human stories. We forget that ideas – good and bad – have always crossed our borderlines; only human beings need a piece of paper. We all deserve a narrative with clarity, and Towle’s has delivered. Spectacular!”

“Crossing the Line:

Finding America in the Borderlands”

Sarah Towle | June 18, 2024 | She Writes Press  

Creative Nonfiction / Memoir / History 

Paperback | 978-1647425791 | $17.95

Ebook | $9.95

About The Author

Sarah Towle is an educator, researcher, and writer; a human rights defender, nature lover, and choral soprano. She resides in an ephemeral borderlands, buffeted and buoyed by a diversity of languages, cultures, landscapes, and creeds. She has taught English language literacy, cross-cultural communication and conflict resolution skills, and the writing craft for three decades across four continents in myriad classroom contexts, including under the trees in refugee settings. An award-winning children’s author, Sarah has earned accolades for her interactive tales for educational tourism. “Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands” is her debut full-length book. 

Sarah is the proud mother of a powerful, confident adult woman. She is grateful to have found her soulmate, who triples as her editor and personal chef. She and her family share a home in London with their rescue hound, Gryffindog, who keeps everyone laughing and gets Sarah away from her desk and walking every day. In addition to getting “Crossing the Line” across the line, Sarah publishes opinions, stories, and audio-tales regularly on Substack: Tales of Humanity. Find her podcast, From the Borderlands, wherever you listen. Learn out more about Sarah at sarahtowle.com.

Follow Sarah Towle on social media: 

Facebook: @sarah.towle | Instagram: @sarahtowle_author | LinkedIn: @sarah-towle

Praise for “Crossing the Line” by Sarah Towle

“Today, the issue of immigration is just an argument, not a subject. But Sarah Towle has obliterated the dead-end arguments and transformed them into riveting, human stories. We forget that ideas—good and bad—have always crossed our borderlines; only human beings need a piece of paper. We all deserve a narrative with clarity, and Towle’s has delivered. Spectacular!”

—Ken Burns, filmmaker

“With Crossing the Line Sarah Towle exposes the relentlessly cruel US immigration system, while restoring the human faces to an issue that is so often lost in a blizzard of polarizing ideology and hate. She makes it clear that what is unfolding now is not just Trump era politics—it’s rooted in more than a century of American exploitation of our southern [and Caribbean] neighbors. For anyone who wants to understand the reality of our dysfunctional immigration system beyond slogans, Crossing the Line is an absolute must read.”

—Scott Allen, Former Editor, Boston Globe Spotlight Investigative Team

“A powerful work. Sweeping and majestic and a striking,

flowing synthesis to tell the overall story that needs to be told.”

—Camilo Perez-Bustillo, author of Human Rights,

Hegemony, and Utopia in Latin America

“A beautiful book, awesomely reported. What an accomplishment and contribution to this issue. Sarah has written this with great empathy. The focus remains squarely on rehumanizing those most harmed by US immigration policies. The chronology makes the meta-story even more riveting and appalling.” 

–Heidi Ostertag, Executive Producer, 

Oh Mercy—Searching For Hope In The Promised Land by Worldwide Documentaries

“With a propulsive narrative and an engaging style, Crossing the Line is an important contribution to our understanding of the borderlands, and by extension, America itself.”

Reece Jones, author of White Borders

“What grace filled and beautiful writing. Thank you for capturing our community’s story!”

—Dylan Corbett, Executive Director, Hope Border Institute,

Regional Assistant Coordinator, Vatican Migrants & Refugees Section

“Thanks for lifting up these voices and not relenting.

Congratulations on a compelling read.”

—Luz Virginia Lopez, Senior Supervising Attorney Immigrant Justice Project,

Southern Poverty Law Center

“Inspiring and transporting from the opening passage. A journey of historical context expertly weaved into the human experience, allows the reader to relate to the current border climate on so many levels. I did not want to stop reading. Abrazos.”

—Elizabeth “Lizee” Cavazos, Angry Tías & Abuelas of the Rio Grande Valley

“Absolutely BRILLIANT, a masterpiece! It feels so lonely at times, like no one understands. But Sarah sees us here in the borderlands, flying the tattered flag of what this country’s ideals are….It all touched me deeply.”

—Madeleine Sandefur, Angry Tías & Abuelas of the Rio Grande Valley

“Sometimes you ache for the unvarnished truth. Sarah Towle tells the it in this book – the whole truth, good, bad, and ugly. She speaks for the silent hordes seeking “the lamp beside the golden door” to be opened for them, giving access to the wonder that is America.”

– Merry Hancock, Cameroon Advocacy Network

“I was intrigued, emotional, astonished, captivated, I learned so much. I absolutely loved it. I could not put it down. A gift to the world.”

—Sergio Cordova, Team Brownsville 

“Powerful and true. An important historical account.” 

–Juan-David Lucio, Team Brownsville 

In an interview, Sarah Towle can discuss:

  • The real crisis at the US southern border
  • What drew her to this issue and why she got involved in telling the stories of migration
  • Reintroducing humanity to the conversations around immigration
  • Sharing her own journey of awakening while still focusing on sharing the narratives of the displaced as well as those attempting to offer welcome
  • The problem with the base-line policy plank of border management: prevention through deterrence
  • The importance of replacing the question “How do we stop human migration?” with “Why are so many people on the run?”
  • Legacy of Department of Homeland Security and why it stands as a model example of “U.S. systemic racism”
  • The “conscience-shocking wrong” that she uncovered while researching this book and why it turned her outrage to activism then abolitionism
  • How language fuels hate and division; how today’s media are contributing to the problem
  • The cultures of impunity inside Department of Homeland Security and why they threaten the safety of all U.S. residents today
  • Greater cultural ramifications to U.S. society if we continue not to address the many-headed hydra that is the U.S. immigration “system”

An Interview with

Sarah Towle

1. We live in a world that has a great number of issues and injustices – what made you particularly interested in investigating the injustices surrounding immigration? 

The topic of immigration – and forced displacement – has been a focus of mine throughout my adult life. In my 20s, during the Dirty War era, I worked in Central America. I spent three to six months each year for five years bearing witness to U.S. military intervention in the region, while teaching teachers of refugees and the internally displaced in El Salvador as part of a Freirean-inspired mass-literacy campaign. The rest of the year, I worked in New York, teaching English and helping to resettle newcomers from the former Soviet Union and Haiti. Then, out of graduate school, I got recruited to help develop and implement a mass English-language and literacy campaign in China, and my life as a migrant by choice and privilege began. 

I’ve been moving across borders in pursuit of opportunities ever since. But even before choosing to live in the ephemeral borderlands, I viewed diversity as an exciting, prevailing good and immigration as a net positive for societies. Newcomers make communities better: They bring new tastes, new tunes, new energy, new perspectives. Some populate sectors where employees are always needed; others bring novel ideas that create employment opportunities for new and old residents alike. They pay taxes that support our schools and fire departments, the construction of our roads and maintenance of our bridges. They contribute to the social security system, thus aiding our elderly.

Then came Trump and his bans and raids and zero tolerance and family separation as a brutal consequence – a punishment – for doing what humans have done since time immemorial: move; for doing what I enjoy as a privilege of my skin tone, academic credentials, and passport: traverse the world in search of self-betterment, learning, and adventure. I was outraged by family separation. Had we learned nothing as a people? The cries of “kids in cages” compelled me to go to the U.S.-Mexico border to see for myself the evil Trump had wrought. Once there, I quickly understood that the border strategy of “cruelty for cruelty’s sake” did not start with him. He wore it out loud, like a badge of honor. But it was the continuation of a bi-partisan project that grew up all around me – all around us – hiding in plain sight, and dating back as far as the Dirty War era, if not farther.

My curiosity piqued, I could not look away again.

2. What compelled you to turn these new insights into a book?

When I first discovered what I now refer to as the “many-headed hydra” that is the U.S. immigration system and border management regime, I was ashamed that I had not recognized it before, especially given my professional background. I didn’t even know, back in early 2018, that the U.S. is surrounded by a 100-mile law enforcement zone, policed by the largest, most troubled, and least transparent armed force in the world — the same force that when ordered to separate families, did; the same force that disappeared Black Lives Matter protesters into unmarked vans and cleared a public park for a presidential photo op. I did not know that said force claims jurisdiction over nine of the country’s 10 largest U.S. cities and two-thirds of its total population. I did not know that in this area, the Fourteenth Amendment has not universally applied since the 1970s. And I had yet to understand the extent to which these structures sprang from the same white supremacist loins upon which the United States was founded. I resolved to peer under the lid to find out what I should have known, but didn’t. When I realized that I wasn’t alone in this lack of awareness, I further resolved to share everything that I had come to know. 

So I came to the topic of human migration from a personal place, but what makes it stand out for me is that it intersects with all other existential issues of our time: The warming planet and the violent capture of nation-states by free trade and global capital both drive forced human displacement, which is increasing year upon year. The rise in human trafficking and transnational organized crime, which I believe are the direct result of hardening borders, everywhere, that encircle the world like a second equator, creating a global apartheid. 

3. Is there a crisis at the American border? And how would you describe that crisis? How does it differ from prevailing narratives about the “migrant crisis?”

The only crisis at the U.S. southern border, and around the globe more generally, is the crisis of the hardening of the human heart — a world in which empathy has seemingly expired. This crisis is the result of the collective turning away, on the part of the world’s wealthiest nations, from post-WWII commitments to value and respect human rights as they’ve steered us toward a “security-first” paradigm. 

The prevailing “crisis” narratives are manufactured by profiteers and political parties that have nothing constructive to offer and everything to lose, so they resort to demagoguery and fear mongering. Their “crisis” is closer to reality-TV than to reality, disseminated by their own propaganda machines posing as news outlets through set pieces and photo ops they create to support a make-believe “invasion.” Tragically, their language, their rhetoric, their harms and horrors messaging has now so thoroughly infiltrated the mainstream media, even the so-called bastions of a liberal mindset, including the current Democratic Party, look positively Trumpian on this issue. 

The greatest danger, really, is the cruelty and violence of the Border Industrial Complex itself. Strip back the law and order “security” apparatus and you will find borderlands communities enriched by cultural diversity and exchange; you will find good people, fine people, just living their lives. I’ve crossed the entire 2000–mile line, and I’m here to tell you: There is no “invasion.” There are, however, people seeking safety from endemic hemispheric dysfunction created by more than a century of unjust economic and foreign policy choices on the part of successive U.S. governments. And there are the normalized “cruelty for cruelty’s sake” practices of shackling and imprisoning, of denying due process, and expelling people back to harm, which gets ratcheted up year upon year upon year. 

4. You grew up during the Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, Labor Rights and Anti-War movements. How did this shape your approach to researching and writing “Crossing the Line?”

These influences likely shaped who I am and why I was drawn to this topic in the first place, with the research and writing approach coming as a natural second. There were many social justice conversations that impacted my worldview from my earliest days. Perhaps the two most formative moments were listening to Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which gave everyone in my world great hope; and witnessing, on the nightly news, a Vietnamese girl about my age streaking naked down a dirt lane, fleeing a village in flames, her face streaked with agony as her back burned from the fire of a U.S. napalm bomb. I responded as a child would: with pure empathy, unadulterated by the politics that justified terrorizing civilian populations. It was an injustice and outrage that would mark me forever. 

At that time, my family and I lived in one of two deliberately integrated U.S. communities, Columbia, Maryland. We worshiped in a multi-denominational church. My father was, even then, a proponent of universal health care, a lone voice for the cause of health care as a right, not a privilege. In my high school years, I was not in the majority as a white Christian. These experiences turned me into a pacifist and provided me an awareness of systemic, racialized inequities in U.S. culture and institutions at a very young age, while simultaneously surrounding me in an embrace of racial, socio-economic, and cultural diversity. 

I suspect they propelled my interest in cultural history and anthropology as well as my determination, from the age of 12, to become a polyglot. This was not an easy task in English-dominant U.S. society with an English-only movement ascendent. So I left. Working across cultures and languages as an adult found me, ultimately, in the esteemed role of training whole school communities in the creative and peaceful resolution of conflict, what is now called Social & Emotional Learning. I plied these skills in post-9/11 New York City with such positive results that even amid the destruction of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, I never imagined the world would swing so quickly and dramatically away from the promise of inclusion to wide scale division; from a human-rights to security-first paradigm that now locks people up in ideological prisons, afraid to engage with others who do not think like them, much less look like them. 

As a storyteller, I try to reach back to the empathic response that fueled my youthful outrage toward first the Vietnam War then Cold and Dirty Wars; I try to embody my former students’ willingness to confront conflict and disagreement with words, not fists. I strive to center the lived experience of my story subjects as a way to celebrate the humanity we share. And I try to steer clear of using dehumanizing labels that rob us of empathy, which is hard to do when such language has for so long been normalized. Like the use of “America” to mean the United States. The arrogance embedded in that one word is, I believe, a big part of the problem.

5. Did you take your own bias and privilege as a white person and voluntary migrant into consideration when approaching the subject of marginalized groups seeking refuge? 

Absolutely. And in two critical ways. But let me first clarify that this book is as much about the folks providing welcome as about those seeking safety and a dignified life. As a twist, though they share privileges, like me, simply by virtue of their birthright, they are also marginalized in this context. They are the folks flying the tattered flag of U.S. values, putting out fires and saving lives every day, with little thanks and less respite. They get no funding from the government while it spends billions of taxpayer dollars each year on enforcement officers, surveillance systems, prisons, guns, and planes. So, just as those displaced and in search of safe haven are victimized by our current immigration laws and systems, so are their helpers. Now Texas Senate Bill 4 threatens, among other things, to make humanitarianism illegal. It isn’t the first attempt.

To return to your question, I proposed this project to participating story subjects as a collaboration, written as much through me as by me. I requested their permission to center their voices in the context of my own awakening to the issue – to show, rather than tell, their stories. Their experiences informed and drove my excavation of the book’s key historical themes. I also invited all story collaborators in fact- and quote-checking and final verification of their passages – a practice unheard of in journalism, for example. It was a monumental undertaking that roughly 75 of the over 100 people in the book embraced – from the U.S. borderlands to D.C. to the U.K. to Cameroon. With this methodology, my intent was to place their stories beside or above my own in a gesture of respect for their role as my teachers, mentors, and guides. But also to illustrate to our readers that behind the tropes and slogans and dehumanizing labels, there are real people facing real challenges that have the power to instruct us, if we’d only listen.

At base, however, this is a book about the harms and horrors, the harvest if you will, of white supremacy and empire. And what better person to write that tale than a white person who’s spent her adult life trying to confront her own unconscious biases? My intention from the outset was to use my privilege as an ally, to harness my positionality to speak to those, like me, who are educated and compassionate, who place a value on human rights, but who have not had the opportunity to see what I have seen; who have not themselves laid eyes on and recognized the human cost of their privilege; who are not fully conscious of the prevailing power of the white supremacy project and our potential complicity within it. But who, I believe, would be outraged too, if they only knew. And will act when they do.

They are the target audience for me and my collaborators. We aim to speak directly to them in hopes of growing our ensemble into a mass choir capable of singing in harmony and with volume, to spread the message that we can, that we must, do better. 

6. Your lifestyle and life experiences are considerably different from the people you’ve written about in this book. What advice do you have for writers potentially in the same position? How can writers and historians ensure they approach subjects with respect, caution and care?

Go. Be with them. Roll up your sleeves and work beside them. Bear witness. See for yourself. Ask those forced into homelessness in cartel-controlled Mexican border tales what they need, then provide the basic human dignities denied them: water, medicines, clean underwear, a nap. Carry life-saving water into the Sonoran Desert, even if it means breaking laws. Chances are, the laws are not just, like the Chinese Exclusion Act, which didn’t even try to hide congressional racism and which birthed the precursor to the US Border Patrol. Volunteer in a borderlands shelter, like Annunciation House in El Paso, which is currently under threat as humanitarianism is vilified. Provide welcome to the new arrivals to your town or city. Visit the tens of thousands of non-criminal offenders currently disappeared into the 200+ prisons of the U.S. immigration gulag: there is, no doubt, at least one within an hour’s drive of you. Meet the imprisoned asylum seekers, engage with them, find out what drove them to flee. It’s the only way to appreciate that being born north of the line doesn’t make you better; it only makes you lucky. 

I’ve been called an “immersive researcher,” which is a less-jargony way of saying that my methodological practice is based on ethnographic research, or going “into the field.” Yes, as a writer I must spend lots of time in my office devouring books and staring at a computer screen. But that time is balanced with putting myself as close as possible to the lived experiences of my story collaborators and meeting their humanity with my own. It’s about walking, to the extent possible, in others’ shoes. Literally.

7. Why do you think conversations around immigration became less about the humans involved and more about the politics? 

It’s a political mis-direction as old as time – the playbook of demagogues and opportunists for millennia. We are living in an age when the worst human impulses are again gaining strength, causing history to tilt toward evil once more. In our case in the U.S., one political party has nothing to offer. They have no solutions to the real issues we face as a people so they fearmonger, appealing to base human prejudices to blind us in order to distract us.

Demagoguery is convenient. But the reality is that one in every one hundred people on the planet right now has been forced from their own home. Human displacement is inextricably linked to global poverty and climate breakdown. Climate breakdown and global poverty are inexplicably linked to centuries of land and water theft and resource extraction of less developed nations by those with means and power and wealth, not to mention war. 

When the destructive harvest of these practices was distant and local, it was harder to see the toll to both human and climate wrought by the long arm of privilege for the goal of corporate and personal profit. But now, the empire’s destruction has grown so vast it can no longer be hidden. Likewise, thanks to the digital interconnectivity of people and things, folks in the Global South can see what they are missing. 

So whether fleeing harm or seeking better, mass human migration is a protest against structures of injustice and inequality. The powers-that-be are reacting by vilifying and victimizing their own victims. They strip them of their humanity and stereotype them as “diseased” and “criminal” as a means of maintaining a status quo that so obviously needs changing. They keep us divided so that we don’t see how dangerous their systems have become; so that we don’t question whether or not these systems actually work. From what I’ve seen, they don’t. Indeed, they’ve turned us all into the true barbarians at the gate.

8. How do you reintroduce humanity into these conversations? What effect do you think humanizing migrants will have on opinions about the migrant crisis?

It’s true that rational arguments such as those above don’t move people. Say these things at a cocktail party and you’ll see your friends running to the bar for a double. Touch them on the empathic level, however, and they listen. 

Only individual human stories — not slogans or talking points — can transform irrational fear into awareness and rational action. Only storytelling holds the power to touch hearts and change minds because it taps the human capacity to empathize. In “Crossing the Line,” I strove to place the experience of real people at the center of all other things – historical and policy analysis; statistics and data – to prioritize humanity even within tales of tragedy, horror, and harm. Through huma experience, I aim to show what’s going on, rather than tell it. I can only hope at this point that my collaborators and I were successful.

9. Can you discuss the importance of replacing the question “how do we stop human migration?” with “why are so many people on the run?” 

Essentially, it’s about whether you believe people are being pulled to the Global North, or pushed. The powers-that-be maintain that people are pulled to the U.S., for example, as they long for a shot at the elusive “American Dream” – another trope. Of course, there is some truth in that argument: If you can make in one day or week what you would make in a year back home, doing the same job, then obviously you will desire to move toward a better paycheck. It is the rare person, however, who elects to pull up stakes and leave behind family and friends, culture and a language, in short everything they’ve ever known, and set out on a journey across borders and into a life of perpetual exile. Especially when they must do so on foot; especially when they must pass through places where they are bound to meet danger at every turn, where they may face mortal peril. No. People don’t leave home unless they must. Unless they are pushed. Unless it is more dangerous to stay.

Asking only “how do we stop human migration?” blinds us from looking into what is driving northward migration. Neoliberal economics provide incentives for transnational corporations, such as no taxes, no environmental controls, and a race to the bottom in wages, that have led to land theft, environmental degradation, and the inability for people across vast swaths of the Global South to earn enough money to support a family. Even basic survival through subsistence farming is becoming rare. Decades of U.S. money, weaponry, and military training to fund first the Dirty Wars and then the so-called Drug War now the so-called War on Terror have corrupted state structures such that the lines between cops and cartels are now completely blurred. Then, there’s the fact that the effects of greenhouse gas emissions pumped into the atmosphere by Global North societies are felt most drastically in the drought and flood zones closest to the equator. Added up, all these factors have thrust onto folks south of the line multiple volatile contexts from which the only escape is flight. But while goods and money as well as ideas, good and bad, are able to move instantly across borders today, people cannot.

10. Your research for this book led to a legal action against ICE. Can you tell us what that’s about? And where does it stand now?

Trump & Co did much to drive a knife into the heart of an already beleaguered immigration and asylum system in the U.S. I refer to their efforts in my book as “death by 1,000 cuts,” which were really more like 400 cuts, some of which were visible to the general public. But most of which were not. One was to lock asylum seeking individuals from majority-Black nations away in Deep South prisons and refuse to let them out even with the coronavirus pandemic turned prisons into death traps exacerbated by prison guards and ICE deportation officers denying their captives masks and hand sanitizer and taking no precautions, themselves, when then moved in and out of and through facilities. When people got sick, they were denied medical care. Many died or were forced to ride out the illness in solitary confinement. Basically, it was a shit show; and in the waning months of Trump’s one-term administration, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, they attempted to get rid of any evidence of these human rights abuses by emptying ICE prisons of African asylum seekers. 

From August 2020 through January 2021, there were one to two flights per month aboard Omni Air International Boeing 767 wide-bodies. Omni Air is a Department of Defense contractor that moonlights for ICE and whose parent company, Air Transport Services Group, boasts Amazon.com as its majority shareholder. Thousands of people were flown back across the Middle Passage in a mass deportation effort, always in chains, in a dress rehearsal for what’s to come if Trump & Co takeover the White House again.

You wouldn’t have known any of this, however, unless you were willing to pay into the extortionist phone calling system owned and operated by GEO Group in order to be a lifeline for those locked up. I was. And that’s how I came to collect hours and hours of testimony about the conditions of ICE detention and deportation. All individuals imprisoned under ICE, even asylum seekers who pose no threat to U.S. society, are bound in five-point restraints while being transported, and more: if someone expresses fear of removal or transfer to another facility, as many did during the pandemic, they get tackled to the ground by ICE’s sixteen to eighteen-member Special Response Teams, a knee put on their neck by one officer as the others immobilize their bodies in an additional  restraint called The WRAP. 

The WRAP is only supposed to be used, “when cuffs just aren’t enough.” It was intended for use in law enforcement contexts when a person has become a danger to him or herself and needs medical attention, stat. But I tracked down and interviewed dozens of people returned to harm in Cameroon. What I learned is that ICE has transformed The WRAP into an instrument of coercion of the many through the torture of a few. I took my findings first to a contact at the Southern Poverty Law Center, who connected me with Fatma E. Marouf, director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Texas A&M University. She and her students applied case law to my research, resulting in our filing a complaint against ICE in October 2021. 

The WRAP complaint was then joined to four other complaints filed on behalf of the Cameroon community for civil rights abuses during their prolonged incarceration, resulting in an internal Department of Homeland Security investigation. For a while there, we thought we’d convinced Biden’s ICE to bring everyone back – the crimes committed by agents of the US federal government being so obviously illegal and egregious. Our interlocutor at ICE promised a sped up process of return under humanitarian parole as long as Prof Marouf, her colleague, and students did the painstaking, time-intensive job of preparing applications for each individual. These were submitted in summer 2023. So far, no word. 

So we’re now preparing to escalate to litigation. I am not at liberty to share anything further at present. Suffice to say, this is not what I thought I was writing about when I began the book project. But the cultures of impunity within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security are now central to the narrative.

11. What do you hope people take away from this book?

I want them to recognize that humans have migrated – in search of opportunity and a way out of poverty or to escape traumatic circumstances – for as long as homo sapiens has walked this earth. I want them to tap into their own family’s migration stories, whether they came by choice or were brought by force, and find empathy for those arriving at our shores today. Behind their movement are similar stories of famine, war, persecution, and zero economic opportunity. 

I want them to understand that the perennial philosophy of religions and societies the world over – to welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and give the thirsty to drink – is being daily flouted by governmentally funded structures so powerful and pernicious that they have normalized the deprivation and abuse of human rights on a grand scale; that these structures and practices are built on dehumanizing an “other;” that they commit crimes against humanity, daily; and if we don’t stop now we may, ourselves, be complicit in a silent genocide against people seeking safety.

The vilification of the world’s most vulnerable people by the migration control regime, what’s more, has become the snake devouring its own tail. We need immigration. Without it, we have children fulfilling the jobs of men, and our elderly falling into destitution as our social security system crumbles. 

We have, what’s more, some of the most evolved surveillance systems in the world. We can distinguish between a little girl arriving unaccompanied and someone intent on doing harm. We just don’t want to.

I want those, like me, with the privilege to cross borders without thinking to question why others can’t. The more we are able to see the systems of normalized cruelty and oppression, as well as who and what is commanding them, the more easily we’ll be able to figure out how to dismantle them. Because we need to dismantle them.

By introducing readers to those both trapped under the monstrous knee or on the front lines modeling, every day, that there is a better way, I hope to bring humanity to what I believe is one the most pressing issues of our time. And at the same time, I hope to provide readers with a handbook for a more humane age. The tales I’ve collected and curated for “Crossing the Line” are a manual for the movement for Just migration. From protest to direct service to congressional advocacy to writing a book, and more, there’s a part for everyone to perform in the growing chorus. I hope readers will join me in singing from the rooftops not just the need for immigration reform, but the need to abolish the system of destruction currently in place and replace it with something more in line with our values and more responsive to human needs. 

First and foremost, it’s time to eschew the crisis and threat narrative and to demand our elected officials to do the right thing: acknowledge that human rights are in direct conflict with bordering practices in a security-first paradigm; that borders are a form of state violence, reinforcing global inequalities and unequal access to a dignified life; that migration is the result of political and economic instability, climate crisis, and neoliberal economic practices gone awry; that race, class, and place biases are baked into U.S. immigration processes and laws. 

Finally, I want everyone to understand that people are not illegal and that none of this is neutral. As long as we refuse to tear the border industrial complex apart, all our rights to safety, mobility, and a dignified life become more compromised and elusive every day.

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True crime memoir of brutal La. murder a compelling tale of healing, justice and triumph of the human spirit

SAN ANTONIO, Texas On Aug. 23, 1987, 26-year-old Selonia Reed was found dead in the parking lot of a gas station in Hammond, Louisiana. Nearly 40 years after her death, on Jan. 30, 2023, her husband Reginald Reed was sentenced to life in prison for her murder.

But that’s far from the entire story.

With unyielding candor, Selonia’s son Reginald L. Reed Jr. courageously navigates the trauma of his mother’s murder and the subsequent arrest and conviction of his father in his debut memoir, “The Day My Mother Never Came Home” (May 21, 2024). Through masterful prose, Reed skillfully navigates the complexities of pain, acknowledging its elusive and intangible nature. As the narrative unfolds — with the inclusion of raw crime scene details, never-before-seen evidence and gripping trial testimony — the author embarks on a courageous exploration, peeling back the layers of decadeslong trauma to reveal the raw wounds that lie beneath the surface.

The book transcends mere true crime storytelling, offering intimate anecdotes and a glimpse inside the process of grief. Through the author’s raw honesty and vulnerability, readers are drawn into a narrative that resonates on a universal level and is a must-read for anyone seeking solace and understanding in the face of loss. Interwoven with reflections on identity and the father-son relationship, the memoir explores the enduring bond between parent and child, despite deep complexity. 

For those hungering for a narrative that lingers long after the final chapter, “The Day My Mother Never Came Home” serves as a poignant testament to the strength found in vulnerability, offering inspiration to all who have journeyed through the depths of grief and emerged on the path to healing.

“The Day My Mother Never Came Home”

Reginald L. Reed | May 21, 2024 | Memoir / True Crime

Paperback, 9788989711116, 19.99| Hardcover, 9798989711109, 27.99

Reginald L. Reed Jr. is an author and an accomplished professional in the pharmaceutical industry. He holds a master’s degree in business and global marketing. In his first book, “The Day My Mother Never Came Home,” Reed recalls the events surrounding the unsolved murder of his 26-year-old mother when he was just 6 years old and the indictment and trial of his father 32 years later. With raw honesty and transparency, the memoir sheds much needed light on losing a parent and the childhood trauma that results. Reed’s narrative style immediately draws the reader into his story — the roller coaster of emotions is captivating and what reads like a true crime novel is Reed’s actual life. He resides in San Antonio, Texas, with his wife, Paula, their son, Lathan, and daughter, Selonia. 

Follow Reginald L. Reed on social media:

Facebook: @RLREEDII | TikTok: @rlreed0 | Instagram: @reginald_l_reed_ii

In an interview, Reginald L. Reed can discuss:

  • How writing the book allowed him to reclaim his voice and shed light on the darkest corners of his life, empowering others to do the same
  • Advice for those navigating trauma, especially young people and those in marginalized communities
  • How the book transcends traditional true crime narratives and offers a nuanced exploration of the complexities of justice
  • How the process of writing the book allowed him to process, grieve and move forward, as well as help others who are hurting 
  • The positive and negative effects of pop culture’s ever-increasing preoccupation with the true crime genre
  • Why the literary community can benefit from elevating authors such as Reed, Kiese Laymon, Michael Todd, Saeed Jones, Bryan Stevenson and more who share their stories

An interview with Reginald L. Reed

1. What has it been like reading news stories about your mother’s death and father’s arrest, and did that inspire you to share your own narrative?

Reading the news stories about my mother’s death and my father’s arrest have been a profoundly disorienting and painful experience. It feels like my private grief and turmoil are being publicly dissected, which has led to feelings of vulnerability and exposure. However, the external narration of this tragedy also serves as a catalyst for reclaiming my own story. It inspired a desire for me to share my narrative, from my perspective, while providing an opportunity to add depth, context, and personal truth to the public discourse.  By doing so, I was able to make powerful steps toward healing and empowerment.

2. In writing your memoir, how did you navigate the process of revisiting and recounting traumatic experiences, especially regarding events that occurred so early in your childhood?

Time and patience! Navigating and recounting the traumatic experiences, especially those from early childhood, often involved a delicate balance of introspection, emotional processing, and seeking support from therapists and trusted individuals within my small circle. It was essential to approach these memories with care, allowing myself the space and time needed to reflect and heal, and craft a narrative that honors my experiences while also respecting my emotional well-being. Additionally, incorporating techniques like meditation, mindfulness and self-care helped manage the emotional toll of revisiting such challenging memories.

3. How did you balance honesty and vulnerability while also respecting the privacy of those involved?

Balancing honesty and vulnerability with the privacy of others while writing, especially about sensitive personal experiences, involved carefully navigating the ethical considerations of storytelling. This process often included focusing on one’s own emotions, reactions and growth, rather than delving deeply into the private details of others’ lives without their consent. When mentioning others, it was important to consider their perspective and potential impact on them, possibly anonymizing identities or seeking their input. This approach allowed for a truthful recounting of events and feelings while maintaining respect for the privacy and dignity of all involved, whether good or bad.

4. Why was it important to you to include details like crime scene specifics and your mother’s autopsy report?

By including specific details such as the crime scene specifics and the autopsy report within the context of my memoir, it served several important purposes. First, my intention was to provide readers with a clear, unflinching look at the reality of the events, grounding the story in undeniable facts and allowing for a deeper understanding of the impact these events had on my life. Secondly, it helped in the process of confronting and processing the trauma, as writing about these details forced me to face the facts head-on, which was a crucial step in the healing process. Lastly, these specifics also contributed to the authenticity and credibility of my memoir, ensuring that the story is not dismissed as exaggerated or overlooked in its severity.

5. How has the process of writing this book impacted your own journey of healing and personal growth?

Writing this memoir about my personal trauma and the journey of healing has profoundly impacted my process of healing and personal growth. This process served as a form of therapeutic expression, allowing me to examine and articulate my deepest feelings and experiences in a structured way, which also led to new insights and provided a deeper understanding of my life and the experiences I was challenged with. It has also been empowering, allowing me to control the narrative, transforming my personal history of pain into a story of resilience and survival. Additionally, my purpose for sharing my story is to foster a sense of connection and support from readers who may have faced similar challenges, further reinforcing that there is life after trauma.

6. In what ways do you hope your memoir will resonate with readers who have experienced trauma or loss?

I hope my memoir will resonate with readers who have experienced trauma or loss by providing them with a sense of companionship and understanding, making them feel less alone in their struggles. By sharing such a deep personal journey of facing and navigating through trauma and loss, the aim is to offer insights into the complexities of healing, showcasing both the vulnerability and resilience inherent in the human spirit. My story seeks to inspire hope and provide practical reflections on coping mechanisms and the nonlinear path of healing, ultimately encouraging readers to find their own strength and pathways to recovery in the face of adversity.

7. What do you think keeps men from writing memoirs and sharing their stories?

Several factors can deter men from writing memoirs and sharing their personal stories, often rooted in societal expectations and norms around masculinity. I believe there’s a fear of judgment, weakness or not living up to these societal standards that prevent men from exploring and sharing their emotional experiences in a public format like a memoir. Additionally, there may be concerns about how their personal revelations will affect their relationships and professional lives. I work in corporate america, therefore; I understand. However, there’s a growing recognition of the value in diverse stories and expressions of masculinity, encouraging more men to share their journeys and contribute to changing narratives around vulnerability and strength. I hope my memoir serves as a reminder to men, especially marginalized men, that sharing one’s story is far from weak, but the most powerful act one can undertake. 

8. Can you share a favorite memory of your mother — something you’d like readers to remember her for?

One of my favorite memories of my mother that I’d like readers to remember her for is her incredible warmth and ability to make anyone feel at home. One of the ways she welcomed others was through her baking skills. Although our time together on this earth was short lived, I constantly hear from others that I was her pride and joy. There were very few times, if any, that I was not with her when seen out in public. I miss my mother and father; I wish so much that they were here to cheer me on in life and be grandparents for our son and daughter. Unfortunately, my cards were dealt from a different deck, but I am determined to use those cards and continue to go through life playing my best hand.

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Books Forward Authors in the Media: March 2024

What can we say, Books Forward authors are always going, going, going! We’re excited to feature some of our authors and their recent media wins.

  • The New York Times Modern Love section featured an excerpt from Anna Monardo’s new book.
  • Yecenia Currie was featured on the podcast It’s All About Food.
  • Bookshop at the End of the Internet had Marschall Runge on to discuss his book Coded to Kill.
  • Mark Ukra’s and Tara Mesalik MacMahon’s book “Closet of Dreams” was called “a home run and a solid start to what promises to be a good series” by Readers’ Favorite.
  • Joan Cohen talks five things you need to know to be a successful writer for Authority Magazine.
  • Houston Public Media interviewed Suzette Mullen about her new memoir.
  • Glen Hileman’s new book was described as “a story of family, love, and a couple learning to face obstacles together” Girl Who Reads’ review.
  • The podcast Women Beyond a Certain Age interviewed author Rossi about her upcoming memoir.
  • Thomas R. Weaver hopped on Any Given Runway to talk about his techno-thriller Artificial Wisdom.
  • Shaan Patel talked about the Digital SAT Playbook and the SAT going digital on Big Blend Radio.
  • Kirkus called Courtney Deane’s When Happily Ever After Fails “a strong debut romance for fans of true happy endings.”
  • Dr. Chuck Wallington joined the Money Making Conversations Master Class for an interview.
  • Pine Reads Review recommends Fatima Al-Fihri from Our Story Media Group “to all educators and young readers.”
  • Gail Schwartz talks creating your chosen family in a guest article for Spiritual Media Blog.
  • Meghan Kallman and Josephine Ferorelli talked with YES! Magazine about family planning in a climate change.
  • Readers’ Favorite called Lauren Martin’s poetry collection a “masterclass” and “a beautiful, thoughtful, and thought-provoking body of work.”

Want to stay up to date on what Books Forward authors are doing? Follow us on Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok and Threads!

Beyond tolerance: Dalai Lama-approved book encourages peace, understanding, and love across faith traditions

“In ‘Raging Fire of Love,’ Dr. Kelly James Clark delves into the teachings of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and concludes that kindness and compassion lie at the heart of them all.”  

His Holiness, the Dalai Lama 

GRAND RAPIDS, MI–In his accessible and inspirational collection of religious insights, “Raging Fire of Love” (May 14, 2024), acclaimed scholar Dr. Kelly James Clark examines the texts of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, searching for teachings of diversity and love. Finding that the similarities that bind us together are far greater than the differences that threaten to divide us, Clark documents valuable lessons to help readers build bridges of understanding between faiths.

Writing about compassion in the Abrahamic traditions with the New Testament, the Hebrew Bible, and the Quran as his guides, Clark provides enlightening anecdotes gleaned from conversations with his friends—Kirk, Jim, Nancy, Mary Ann and Ted; Aaron, Silvia, Samuel, Shira, and Shlomit; and Abdullah, Ghazala, Asif, Zahabia, and Mohammed. Through these interfaith conversations, Clark finds kernels of wisdom that will motivate readers to move beyond tolerance and toward acceptance and love of others.

“Raging Fire of Love: What I’ve Learned from Jesus, the Jews, and the Prophet”

Kelly James Clark | May 14, 2024 | Self-Published | Nonfiction, Memoir, Spirituality

Ebook | ASIN: B0CW1SBZZC | $2.99

“I am grateful for Clark’s informative and inspirational call to the children of Abraham, to all of God’s children really, to resist our divisive fears and to bravely and hopefully persist in love.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 1931-2021

About the author…

KELLY JAMES CLARK, PHD: is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Ibn Haldun University in Istanbul. He earned his PhD in Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame in 1985. He has taught at Gordon College, Calvin College, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of St. Andrews; he has held visiting appointments at Oxford University, Peking University, and Wuhan University. He has authored over 100 articles and written, co-authored or edited over 30 books, including most relevantly, Strangers, Neighbors, Friends: Muslim-Christian-Jewish Reflections on Compassion and Peace; Written to be Heard: Recovering the Lost Messages of the Gospels; God and the Brain; and Abraham’s Children: Liberty and Tolerance in an Age of Religious Conflict. He is also executive producer of the feature film, “The Manifestation.” Learn more at his website: https://kellyjamesclark.wixsite.com/kellyjamesclark 

In an interview, Kelly James Clark can discuss:

  • Why “Raging Fire of Love” is important for today’s contemporary climate
  • What the New Testament, the Hebrew Bible, and the Quran teach about love
  • What these religious texts teach regarding diversity and acceptance
  • Where religious prejudice stems from, and how to overcome implicit bias
  • Steps readers can take to bridge the gap between faiths and move toward a more peaceful world

An Interview with

Kelly James Clark

1. What do Judaism, Christianity and Islam teach about love? 

Jesus, a Jew, located himself within the Jewish tradition of love-grounded justice and peace revealed by God to Moses; the Quran, affirming both the Mosaic Law and the Gospel of Jesus, sees the reduction of pride (the diminishing of the incessant ego) as necessary for acts of compassion, kindness, and justice. Despite some surface differences, each of the three Abrahamic traditions affirms the grounding of and motivation for justice and peace in the love of God and love of neighbor as one loves oneself. And while all three traditions commend love for your near-neighbor, it’s usually easy to love within your tribe. So all three extend “neighbor” to include those you might fear–the stranger and even the enemy; such distant-neighbor-love is risky business.

2. How do these three religions endorse diversity and acceptance of others?

The Books of Love—the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Quran—call  us to be compassionate, patient, generous, and forgiving toward all of our neighbors, near or distant; they envision a radically inclusive world in which everyone lives together and in peace. They ground the honor and respect of all people, in spite of their surface differences, in humanity’s creation in the image of God. Finally, what God loves–all of humanity–we should love, too.

3. Where does religious prejudice stem from and how can we work to overcome implicit bias?

We naturally divide people into in-groups and out-groups. Children learn from their elders who and what are in and who and what are out. When they do, fear and love take on a life of their own. The in-group becomes the locus of all that is good: family, friend, trust, cooperation, and compassion; the out-group becomes the locus of all that is bad: threat, enemy, fear, competition, and hate. The most effective way to overcome our biases against members of other religions and cultures is to meet the “other” and listen (and begin to care).

4. Is understanding other religious practices the first step toward finding acceptance and love for one’s neighbor?

The first step toward finding acceptance and love for one’s very different neighbor is almost always meeting them and listening to them. I have never met Judaism or Islam, I have, however, met and gotten to know many Jews and Muslims. As I will repeat—we don’t meet theologies, we meet people. And meeting people is vastly more transformative than reading about an idea. In “Raging Fire of Love,” you will meet some of the friends who transformed me. I think, through them, you will learn, as I did, a great deal about Judaism and Islam.

5. What do you hope readers will take away from “Raging Fire of Love”?

This book aims to inspire and inform readers about their own and other traditions. The former will serve to mobilize members of a tradition to appropriate all of its resources to

transform their fears into love. The latter will serve to decrease fear and suspicion through a better understanding of those in other traditions. As we become increasingly nationalist, isolationist, and tribal, we need to find ways to inspire the love that conquers fear.

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Debut novel celebrates the resilience of the human spirit

Mental health expert uses profession to craft uplifting coming-of-age story

Fremont, CA – In her debut novel, All I Know (Buckberg Mountain Books, June 11, 2024), Holly C. LaBarbera deftly tells the story of a young woman who overcomes childhood trauma and tragedy to try and build a life with the boy she’s always loved.

LaBarbera, a psychotherapist and professor, uses her extensive knowledge and experience to explore the complexities of romantic relationships as well as those within families and among friends, showing that love comes in many forms, including choosing to love oneself.

About the book: Kai Martin sees her life as a series of concentric circles—her twin brother Kade occupying the center sphere with her, their parents surrounding them in the next, and the Tyler family in the outer loop–a connection Kai plans to make official by someday marrying Josh Tyler. The Martins and Tylers share memorable times together, but under the surface, they are two dysfunctional families struggling with alcoholism, depression, and abuse, all of which leads to a devastating event that knocks Kai off her axis and makes her doubt everything she thought she knew.

Josh is there through it all, and Kai eventually gets the romance she dreamed of, embarking on a life of travel and adventure with the boy she always loved. Yet reality is more complicated than any childhood fantasy, and when painful family patterns are reenacted between them, Kai must decide how much of herself she is willing to sacrifice for Josh. Ultimately, she must confront the heartbreaking truth that as much as we try to help the people we love, we can only truly save ourselves.

Perfect for fans of Ask Again, Yes and Everything I Never Told You, All I Know is a celebration of indomitable spirit and finding faith in oneself.

All I Know

Holly LaBarbera | June 11, 2024 | Buckberg Mountain Books | Women’s Fiction 

Paperback | 979-8-9894929-0-9 | $14.99 

E-Book | 979-8-9894929-1-6 | $5.99 

Holly LaBarbera began her creative writing career with a lightning bolt of inspiration for her first book, the as-yet-unpublished Five Days, followed by All I Know, and is currently revising her third novel. Participating in the Community of Writers Workshop in 2018 significantly contributed to her growth and development as a writer both during her time there and through ongoing connections with other amazing writers who have become critique and accountability partners, both in formal and informal writing groups. Holly is a psychotherapist and an adjunct professor at Santa Clara University’s School of Counseling Psychology, guiding graduate students in becoming licensed therapists.

Holly was born in Hawaii, grew up just north of New York City, and now lives outside of San Francisco. She considers herself equal parts New Yorker and California girl, a loyal fan of the Yankees and the Golden State Warriors. She loves reading and writing and is old-school in both, enjoying the feel of holding a book in her hands and turning actual pages and also doing her part to keep the post office in business by regularly sending handwritten letters and cards, much like her debut novel’s protagonist Kai.

Follow Holly LaBarbera on social media: 

Twitter: @hollycoleen1 | Instagram: @hollytellsatale | Facebook: Holly Coleen Labarbera

In an interview, Holly LaBarbera can discuss:

  • How her experience as a mental health professional and working with clients similar to the Tylers and Martins helped shape the characters in her book
  • The importance of creating a realistic story based on the author’s experience as a mental health expert
  • How childhood and family-of-origin experiences impact adult relationships
  • The theme of resilience throughout the novel and communicating how to rise above life’s devastations
  • The theme of creating meaning in our lives and having faith in both self and others, and how that plays throughout the various characters in her story

Advanced praise for All I Know

“A heartbreaking yet uplifting story of the perils found in all families. LaBarbera deftly shows how childhood wounds and mental health challenges impact adult relationships. Protagonist Kai’s struggles will resonate with readers, as will the resilient human spirit that allows her to find hope, to overcome, and to grow into an ever-better version of herself.

-Robert Dugoni, critically acclaimed New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and #1 Amazon bestselling author of the Tracy Crosswhite police series, which has sold more than 8 million books worldwide and the coming-of-age standalone novel The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell.

“In All I Know, Kai’s heartbreaking journey asks us to confront big questions about family and personal trauma: What happens when the people we love hurt each other? How does that shape our relationships with others and with ourselves? How do we move forward when we can’t forget the past? LaBarbera’s characters are as funny as they are flawed, and I couldn’t look away from their struggles to love each other as much as I loved each of them.”

-Claire Boyles, author of Site Fidelity, 2022 Whiting Award Winner in Fiction and Longlisted for the 2022 PEN America/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collections.

“A tender, thoughtful and heartbreaking story, ALL I KNOW is a snapshot of the inner heart. You will fall in love with Kai, a child struggling to decipher the complicated messages that come our way in route to adulthood. It’s raw, it’s real, and it’s compelling through and through.”

Lee Kravetz, author of the novel The Last Confessions of Sylvia P. as well as acclaimed nonfiction, Strange Contagion and SuperSurvivors

“All I Know captures one woman’s heart-wrenching journey in coming to terms with her past, the trials of two, close-knit families increasingly caught in the web of addiction, and the ongoing struggle to overcome a heartbreaking loss. At its core, it is also a gripping tale of an epic love rooted in childhood, the quest to overcome mutual demons, and the courage to transcend dependency to embrace the possibilities of a new kind of love reborn of mutual respect, resilience, and humility. Readers will root for Kai (and Josh) every step of the way!”

-Susan Dugan, author of the short story collection, Safe Haven

All I Know is more than a family drama, more than a love story, though it is also both. It’s a moving novel of picking up the pieces after a family tragedy, contending with loss, talking to ghosts, and fearlessly pursuing love and happiness. Kai Martin, the novel’s heroine, reminds us that true connections can never be broken — not by time, change, or even death. Hopeful and unforgettable.”

Caroline Kim, author of The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories, which won the 2020 Drue Heinz Prize in Literature, was long listed for both the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and the Story Prize, and was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award and the Janet Heidinger Award for Fiction

“ALL I KNOW, Holly C LaBarbera’s immersive coming of age tale, explores what happens to young love as it ages. As we follow Kai through tragedy, transformation, and heartbreak, across the US and Europe, the novel reminds us of the joys and sorrows of self-discovery. A book on grief as much as love, ALL I KNOW won my heart and kept me up past bedtime until its final pages.”

-Amy Meyerson, bestselling author of The Bookshop of Yesterdays and The Imperfects

.”..a book that amplifies the great feeling of success at knowing the human spirit is resilient….the author does a brilliant job at explaining how and why Kai makes the decisions she makes, and even if the reader would choose a different path, Kai’s point of view is understandable….the characters are very well developed with care and great depth. Not only are the characters well developed, the feeling the reader gets of family in the book is also deep. When some of the family–real or chosen–are not there, the reader feels the void.”

-LitPick review

“Young members of intertwined families forge a complicated bond in the tense coming-of-age novel All I Know. Early on, the book lingers on one-on-one interactions well, emphasizing its aching inter-family ties…the story is driven by the choices that each of the characters makes, with their complicated family intimacies best established via Kai’s maturing perspective.”

-Foreword Clarion Review

An Interview with

Holly LaBarbera

1. Why is this story important to you? 

This story is a way for me to honor all the difficult stories I’ve heard from the hundreds of clients I’ve worked with over the years, not to mention the personal experiences of friends and relatives who have been challenged in ways similar to the characters in my book, loved ones who have struggled with depression, addiction, trauma, codependency and grief. I have been inspired by their strength, courage and resilience, and wanted to create a story that shows all of the hardship and sadness and beauty and hope that are a part of life. 

I also love a good love story and wanted to write something that was romantic, yet went beyond romantic love to encompass the many forms love takes; exploring the depth of sibling bonds, the power of female friendships, the complexity of parent-child relationships, and the importance of loving oneself.

2. How does your background as a mental health expert inform the character and themes in your book, particularly in relation to the struggles of the Martin and Tyler families?

As a psychotherapist, I spend my days exploring relationships, learning what brings people together, keeps them together, and pulls them apart. I witness brave journeys of self-discovery and the difficult choices we are called upon to make, all of which I hope brings truth to my characters and their journey. I hear stories similar to those I created for the Martin and Tyler families, stories of trauma and suffering, of the ways in which our families of origin influence all our future relationships and the ways in which we move through the world. I also witness people overcoming all of that to become their best selves, as Kai does. Their stories inspired me.

3. Kai and Josh’s relationship is deeply influenced by the experiences they each had as children in their particular families of origin. How common is it that couples are impacted by how they grew up?

Based on my training and experience with the developmental model of couples therapy, Imago therapy, emotionally focused therapy and attachment theory, it is clear to me that couples are commonly (if not always) impacted by their childhood experiences. The ways in which our parents relate to us and to each other leave wounds and unfulfilled needs that we reenact with our adult romantic partners in an attempt to heal and fulfill our needs. The ways in which we moved through our own development or got stuck in one stage or another, influence how deeply and well we can connect with our partner. Kai and Josh exemplify all this.

4. How do you balance the fine line between addressing sensitive mental health topics in your writing while ensuring it resonates with a broader audience?

Characters in this story struggle with mental health issues including addiction, codependency, depression, trauma, grief, and the ways in which our families of origin impact our adult relationships. Almost fifty-three million people in the United States experienced mental illness in 2020, and seventeen million experienced a co-occurring substance use disorder that year; those numbers have quite likely grown since the pandemic. For those who have not experienced a mental health challenge themselves, they likely have been impacted by someone else who has, similar to the way in which Kai is impacted by Kade’s struggle. 

However, a primary theme of the book is resilience. Many of the hardships in All I Know stem from mental health issues, but the broader message of the book is about overcoming and rising above whatever difficulties life brings, to which we can all relate.

5. The search for the meaning of life is a significant theme in All I Know. How does Kai grapple with doubts and what role does faith play in her journey of finding the meaning of her life?

At the beginning of the book, Kai is a child who is certain of everything. As she experiences trials and trauma, she begins to doubt everything—her parents, herself, the viability of love and relationships. She comes of age trying to integrate the things she knows with the doubts she has, and cultivate the faith required to move through the world in a meaningful way. This includes both faith in herself and in others, learning not to sacrifice self for others. Empathy, support and deep connections are part of the fuel that powers Kai’s faith, strength and resilience, as it is for most of us.

6. What message do you hope for your readers to take away from All I Know?

This is a story about strength and resilience, rising from devastation to build and rebuild a life, over and over again. It is about the power women contain within themselves that is often buried and needs to be discovered. It reminds the reader of the power of female friendships, which can sometimes be more significant than romantic partners. It explores the heartbreaking truth that as much as we try to help the people we love, we can only truly save ourselves. I hope readers will get a sense of hope, inspiration and empowerment from reading All I Know.

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YA fantasy blends dystopia of “Hunger Games” with magic of “Crescent City”

Enthralling with lush worldbuilding, slow-burn romance in magical cacotopia

SPRING BRANCH, TX – Readers will be captivated by this spellbinding YA fantasy debut with a poignant message of hope and resilience. “The Last Refuge” by Christina Bacilieri (Crescent Ink Publishing, LLC, November 14, 2023) is the gripping first novel in the Stealing Sanctuary trilogy, weaving together the destinies of two dreamers caught up in a dark curse that spans generations. Bacilieri crafts a novel that is richly layered with tension, intrigue, and the mystique of forbidden magic. Enter a world of gripping adventure where love burns slowly, family is chosen, and hope is a dangerous yet beautiful dream.

Magic will transform you. Power could destroy you. 

Actions will define you.

Kiera Vandyer told herself she’d only agreed to this scheme for the money, that nothing else had drawn her to this venture, but you can’t lie to the truest parts of yourself. For sixteen years, she’s hidden her burning curiosity for magic, knowing that one misstep would mean certain death at the hands of Atterah’s merciless leaders: the all-powerful Ruling Board.

Just when Kiera is on the cusp of securing a stable future for herself and her mother, a cruel twist of fate forces her to commit the worst possible infraction. She trespasses over the border into Etabon, the last refuge for magic on Atterah. Once within, her rare form makes her a target for the warden of the site. To escape the warden and conceal her crime from the Ruling Board, Kiera must use her strange new powers to battle for her freedom…or die trying.

A suspenseful adventure that will engage readers to the final page.”  

–Kirkus Reviews

“The Last Refuge”

Christina Bacilieri | November 14th, 2023 | Crescent Ink Publishing, LLC | YA Fantasy

Print | 979-8-9886618-1-8 | $24.99 | Paperback | 979-8-9886618-0-1  | $14.99 

Ebook | 979-8-9886618-2-5 | $9.99


CHRISTINA BACILIERI: Christina Bacilieri is the author of the young adult fantasy “The Last Refuge,” the debut novel in her Stealing Sanctuary series. She’s a fan of all things magic and grew up on a steady diet of fantasy novels and pasta supplied by her loving grandmother. Christina studied marketing at the University of Texas at San Antonio before working as a business relationship consultant and project manager. When she’s not reading or writing, you can find her wandering through nature or taking in art at her favorite museums. She and her husband share their home in Texas with two snuggly pups and an abundance of books. Find out more about Christina and news of upcoming books in the Stealing Sanctuary series at her website. 

Follow Christina Bacilieri on social media: 

Instagram: @christinabacilieri | Tik Tok: @christinabacilieriauthor


In an interview, Christina Bacilieri can discuss:

  • How Bacilieri’s upbringing with strong female role models empowered her to write characters defying societal norms, central themes of self-discovery, empowerment, and resilience.
  • How Kiera’s journey embraces self-wholeness and the transformative power of inner magic; amidst societal fragmentation and pressure for assimilation, her story highlights unity in speaking truth to power, fostering freedom and hope.
  • The novel’s thoughtline of finding magic in individual differences, which was inspired by her childhood experiences of growing up with dyslexia. 
  • How books were a place of refuge and comfort for Bacilieri growing up and in turn inspired her journey as a writer. 
  • How writing this story brought healing and hope during her darkest time, following the loss of her grandmother, for whom the story was dedicated. This deeply influenced the theme of love, community, and friendship amidst adversity.
  • The striking parallels between Bacilieri and her main character: Kiera battles against her magical dreams, mirroring Bacilieri’s own struggle with imposter syndrome as she hesitated to embrace her dream of becoming an author.
  • How Kiera’s bisexuality showcases the power of writing a queer character whose identity isn’t the focal point of the narrative, but rather an intrinsic part of their multidimensional existence.

An Interview with

Christina Bacilieri

1. What inspired the concept for “The Last Refuge” and the rest of The Stealing Sanctuary series?

The premise of the book came to me in a dream. In the dream I watched as Kiera crossed over the border into Etabon and changed into her magical form. I’ve always loved books like the “Chronicles of Narnia”, “A Wrinkle in Time”, “The Giver”, and “Harry Potter” so I feel the idea for this book had been growing in my mind for a long time. After I had that dream it sparked an idea to create a world where the beings were many different types of creatures cut off from their magic. I’ve always loved the “who would I become” idea. Like many people during 2020 and 2021 I was struggling with the loss of family and writing this book brought me a deep sense of hope, community, and resilience which I channeled into my characters and the series overall.

2. How did the strong women in your life, particularly your mother and grandmother, play a role in your inspiration for writing “The Last Refuge?” 

I wouldn’t be the woman I am today without the love and guidance of the incredible women in my life, that is why I’ve imbued those characteristics into my FMC and her mentors. My mother was the first person to read the original handwritten draft of “The Last Refuge” and has encouraged me throughout my writing journey. My grandmother gifted me with my love of story. I would go to her house every Friday night to have dinner and swap stories (our favorite books, shows, and what happened to us that week). At her table I could be wholly myself – she loved me unconditionally. I dedicated this book to her because without her presence in my life I wouldn’t have had the courage to pick up a pen. Stories connected me and my grandma – now that she’s passed, I still miss her but when I’m experiencing a good story I can still feel her with me. Community and love are the foundation on which I built this book – I learned so much of that from her.

3. Why was it important to you to write a story of found family and community? 

As human beings, we all encounter moments of feeling like outsiders, and the sense of being unseen by those around us can be profoundly isolating. In my story, Kiera experiences a similar sense of being set apart even within the borders of Etabon. However, she discovers a group of beings who love and accept her for who she truly is. In a world where loneliness is increasingly prevalent, I aimed to create a narrative of hope, emphasizing that readers are not alone in these feelings. “The Last Refuge” underscores the idea that our differences are a source of magic and unity. Personally, it took time for me to find my closest friends, but once I did they became an essential part of my life and inspired the friendships within the story.

4. How did your experiences of struggling with dyslexia inform your journey as an author and writing this series? 

I struggled with dyslexia growing up and was bullied in grade school for it. After working with a reading specialist my struggle with reading turned into one of my greatest joys in life. There are times where dyslexia can still make writing frustrating but my relationship to it has transformed. If I’d never been given the opportunity to work one on one with a creative reading specialist I’m not certain I would’ve developed my deep wonder and appreciation for stories. Now, I could not imagine my life without them, each book I’ve read has shaped me in a different way. That is the beauty of storytelling – it allows us to experience the lived experiences of the characters on the page. We can grow alongside them traveling to magical places, feeling joy, or grief and ultimately becoming more empathetic people. My main character Kiera feels other for her differences – I want to share that our differences don’t have to define us but are a thread in the tapestry that make us who we are. Our challenges can forge a path to our triumphs.

5. What do you hope that readers take away from reading “The Last Refuge?” 

I hope my readers take away a sense of wonder from “The Last Refuge.” My goal is to immerse them in a world where they can lose themselves and escape into the lush worldbuilding and twists and turns of Kiera’s journey. Growing up, stories provided a safe place for me to dream and I want to create a similar haven for readers.

6. What’s coming next for Kiera and The Stealing Sanctuary series? 

Book two in the Stealing Sanctuary series will focus on the choices Kiera will be forced to make and the internal battle of the light and dark within herself. She will unravel secrets about her past and her future. To save the ones she loves, Kiera will not only have to call upon her magic like never before, but she must rely on the bonds that she’ll forge throughout her trials. There’s a darkness growing within the borders of Etabon, and if it’s unleashed upon Kiera’s world… not even the deepest love or strongest magic will set the scales of light and dark to rights again.

Download press kit and photos

A tender and witty reflection of living unapologetically in the face of terminal illness

Perfect for fans of “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone” by Lori Gottlieb

SACRAMENTO, CAHow do you find joy when faced with a terminal diagnosis? Debut author Ann Bancroft tackles this theme with sharp humor and profound compassion in her new novel, “Almost Family” (She Writes Press, May 28, 2024). Featuring a rough-around-the-edges, quick-witted heroine who stumbles upon an unlikely, but necessary, found family; this debut deftly balances the existential questions raised by terminal illness with honesty and wry humor, reflecting the power of love to heal and foster growth even at the end of life. 

Liz Millanova has stage four cancer, a grown daughter who doesn’t speak to her, and obsessive memories of a relationship that tore her marriage apart.  She thinks of herself as someone who’d rather die than sit through a support group, but now that she actually is going to die, she figures she might as well give it a go. 

At a hospital-sponsored group, Liz hits it off with two other patients. Dave, a gay Vietnam vet, Rhonda, a devout, nice woman, and snarky Liz decide to ditch the group and meet on their own. They call themselves The Oakland Mets, and their goal is to enjoy life while they can. In the odd intimacy they form, Liz learns to open up and get close. The trio joined forces to have a good time – but what they wind up doing is helping one another come to grips with dying and resolve the unfinished business in their lives. 

“It’s a story that follows a remarkable trajectory from loneliness and heartbreak to lasting love. An often-resonant narrative of adversity and friendship.” 

— Kirkus Reviews

“Almost Family”

Ann Bancroft | May 28, 2024 | She Writes Press | Fiction 

Paperback | 978-164742-666-8 | $17.95

Ebook | 978-164742-666-8 | $9.95

Ann Bancroft began writing fiction after a career in journalism and communications. Her first job after graduating from UC Berkeley was as “copy boy” at The Oakland Tribune, at a time when there were few women in the newsroom. As a reporter, she worked in the State Capitol bureaus of the San Francisco Chronicle, United Press International and the Associated Press. She wrote editorials for The Sacramento Bee and was later appointed communications director for the State Department of Education. After a first bout of breast cancer, she retired early and began writing fiction, leading generative writing workshops, and mentoring breast cancer patients. She’s an alumna of the Community of Writers, the Tomales Bay Writers Workshops, and Everwood Farmstead artist’s residency. “Almost Family” is her debut novel, to be published when she is 71. Ann and her husband are avid travelers and hikers, and when not writing,she loves to cook and entertain. They live in Sacramento and Coronado, California. Find out more about her at her website.

Follow Ann Bancroft on social media:

Facebook: Ann Bancroft Author

Instagram: @bancroftann

TikTok: @annban24

In an interview, Ann Bancroft can discuss:

  • Why it is never too late to pursue a dream and what inspired her to become a debut author at 71 
  • How her experience as a two-time breast cancer survivor profoundly informed her writing 
  • The parallels between her journalism career and the rich narrative she crafts, drawing inspiration from her professional journey
  • How her concerns about addiction inspired an underlying theme of the novel
  • Why the concept of “found family” is so important and what compelled her to make that a cornerstone of the narrative

Advanced praise for “Almost Family” 

Almost Family is a book that comes right at the hard stuff with a whole lot of truth and even more humor. Ann Bancroft writes a beautiful story about love and the power of friendship to heal what the doctors can’t.”

— Jodi Angel, author of “You Only Get Letters from Jail” and “Biggest Little Girl”

“I found Ann Bancroft’s bracingly honest novel about three ordinary people wrestling with the end of life impossible to put down. Who would have guessed that dancing on the edge could be so much fun?”

— Hugh Delehanty, coauthor with Phil Jackson of the #1 New York Times bestseller “Eleven Rings”

Almost Family by Ann Bancroft is most certainly a literary masterpiece. . .There was so much to be felt, learned, experienced, and savored in this narrative. . . Each character was beautifully, intelligently portrayed and intensely believable.”

— Readers’ Favorite, 5 star review

“It’s a story that follows a remarkable trajectory from loneliness and heartbreak to lasting love. An often-resonant narrative of adversity and friendship.” 

— Kirkus Reviews

Almost Family is a well-written, thought-provoking story from a gifted writer.”

—Readers’ Favorite, 5-star review

An Interview with

Ann Bancroft

1. What compelled you to pursue writing fiction later in life? What has your journey as a debut author at 71 been like? 

I’ve always written stories, but since I was an eight year-old writing a crayon-illustrated sequel to Pippi Longstocking, my stories have always been based on reporting about other people, or inhabiting the voice of other people as a speechwriter and ghostwriter. 

I decided to try my hand at fiction when I retired early, at 57, and took some classes, beginning with a couple of short stories. I liked getting lost in the flow of imagination and that wonderful experience of falling in love with characters I’d made up. I did not start with a goal of writing a novel but the story kept growing and I kept at it until I thought it was done. It’s been through years of ups, downs, rejection, praise and revisions,through the pandemic and another bout of cancer. During a couple of years when I’d gotten discouraged and stashed this story in a drawer, I got halfway through a second novel, but this one, originally titled The Oakland Mets, kept calling me back.  

2. Tell us about how your experiences with breast cancer helped you write “Almost Family.” Why is the topic of end of life companionship important to you? 

Having been a reporter for much of my life, I tend to look at experiences through a reporter’s eyes. The experience of cancer was rich with anecdotes, from acts of kindness to the ways people responded to my post-chemo self, to the raw physical and emotional experience of getting through treatment. I was also a mentor to many cancer patients, through a hotline and as a one-on-one peer navigator for women going through treatment. So it’s something I feel confident writing about, and it felt good to explore my thoughts about it in writing.

Since my 30s, I’ve lost many loved ones to cancer, from both of my parents to two of my closest women friends, a boyfriend, a beloved boss, close work colleagues, neighbors – really, there was a time when people must’ve thought, “stay away from her, everyone she comes across gets cancer!”

But along with the awful parts of witnessing terminal disease, staying close to a person who is at the end of their life is a powerful, almost sacred experience. Once you get past your own fear and discomfort, you have the opportunity for a profound openness and connection unlike any other. That’s what I wanted my characters to experience.

3. How were you able to use humor in order to craft a story around a painful and sometimes taboo topic?

If you’ve ever experienced the irresistible urge to laugh at, say, a funeral or while wedding vows are being read, you know that things can strike you as funny even in the most inappropriate circumstances. There is a certain absurdity that underlies even Very Serious Situations, because life is often absurd, particularly when we’re trying to be very serious. I had lots of darkly funny thoughts while undergoing cancer treatment, and I wanted to bring that sensibility to my writing. Actually, I couldn’t help but bring that sensibility to my writing because that’s how I see things. Dark humor is my favorite genre.

4. What are some misconceptions you feel people have about cancer patients? Do you think that “Almost Family” will challenge those misconceptions?

I hope it will challenge some misconceptions. I hope it will make people more comfortable thinking and talking about terminal illness in this culture that is violent, but doesn’t deal well with mortality. 

Some common misconceptions – that once you have cancer, it defines you. That cancer patients can’t possibly want to joke around, or enjoy trivial things, or that because they have cancer they can’t also be worried about their jobs and relationships, or be troubled by that stupid thing they said or annoyed at the long line at the grocery store.  Also, even while cancer can help a person grow emotionally, it does not confer sainthood. Cancer doesn’t automatically make you see the light and become the very best human being you only imagined you could be. That’s why Liz is a character with many flaws who continued to make errors in judgment even after her first cancer diagnosis.

Of course cancer casts a huge shadow, but even when it’s stage four, it’s not the only thing in a person’s life. Life, for better or worse, does go on until you die.

5. How did your previous career as a journalist translate to becoming an author? 

Being a journalist helped me to see details, to empathize and, of course, to write clearly and quickly. What it didn’t do was teach me how to write from my imagination. I had to work pretty hard at that, but my experience in prompt-writing workshops helped a lot. I had to pay attention to my career-long tendency to summarize events, rather than slowing down and showing them, and I really didn’t get, early on, that speed doesn’t count in the painstaking process of getting a book ready for publication. 

6. What do you hope readers will take away from reading “Almost Family?” 

First of all, I hope they’ll laugh and maybe cry with the three wonderful characters who came to inhabit the page. I hope they’ll get more comfortable thinking and talking about cancer. For those many people who have experienced cancer either personally or with a loved one, I hope they’ll feel seen and heard, and that they’ll also laugh even if they cry along with Liz, Rhonda and Dave.

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Founder of pregnancy loss app hopes to provide comfort with release of candid memoir exploring grief

Bloomington, MNEmbark on a poignant journey through the pages of “When Skies Are Gray: A Grieving Mother’s Lullaby” (May 21, 2024, She Writes Press), a compelling memoir by psychotherapist Lindsey Henke. Lindsey is the visionary founder of Pregnancy After Loss Support (PALS), a nonprofit offering crucial support for parents navigating pregnancy after a previous perinatal loss or infant death. Her writing has been featured on Huffington Post and New York Times and she has been interviewed by USA Today and Romper. Lindsey’s candid narrative intimately unfolds her heart-wrenching stillbirth journey and the subsequent grief that enveloped her world.

“It really does get better, but not in the way you think. Your life and heart grow bigger to hold both loss and love.”

Newlywed Lindsey joyously anticipates the arrival of her first child, only to be confronted by every parent’s worst nightmare: the devastating news of her baby’s silent heartbeat. The pages of “When Skies Are Gray” navigate Lindsey’s agonizing odyssey through loss, portraying the simultaneous dance of mourning and the anticipation of new life. This heartfelt memoir serves as a comforting companion for mothers worldwide who may be navigating their own path of grief.

Through Lindsey’s personal experience, the book delivers a poignant message: the pain of loss is undeniably real, but with time, the sharp ache of grief softens. Yet, the love for the child lost endures, offering solace to grieving mothers everywhere. In the tender pages of this memoir, Lindsey assures readers that it’s not only permissible but essential to embrace that enduring love—an everlasting lullaby that echoes the timeless truth: a mother’s love never dies.

“When Skies Are Gray: A Grieving Mother’s Lullaby”

Lindsey Henke | May 21, 2024 | She Writes Press | Memoir 

Paperback | 978-1-64742-630-9 | $17.95 

Kindle | B0C9HSZDP6 | $8.99

Advance Praise for “When Skies Are Gray”

“A poignant remembrance with therapeutic underpinnings.” 

—Kirkus Reviews

“Through When Skies Are Gray, Lindsey cracks wide open the stigma that parental grief and bereavement are topics avoided in the ‘mommy-verse.’ The reality is not every mother leaves the maternity ward with a healthy newborn. Not every birth story can be wrapped up in a perfect pink or blue bow. But through Lindsey’s words, you’ll find there is beauty in talking about the sad stories, too. Her love for her daughter Nora lives on through each and every page.”

—Jane Chertoff, former editor of Pregnancy and Newborn Magazine

“A compelling memoir about the loss of a baby and the love that lives on after death. Lindsey Henke brings beauty and lightness to even the darkest moments of a bereaved mother’s broken heart. If you are a bereaved mother, you will feel seen and comforted, and if you love a bereaved mother, you will gain a glimpse into her deep grief in this breathtaking book.”

—Anna Whiston-Donaldson, New York Times best-selling author of 

Rare Bird: A Memoir of Love and Loss

“Lindsey has turned her grief story into an exquisite and moving love story about being a bereaved mother yearning for what should have been while she learns to embrace what is. This poignant memoir contributes to the social movement of destigmatizing grief by reminding us that grief is just love.”

—Dr. Jessica Zucker, psychologist and author of I Had a Miscarriage: A Memoir, a Movement 

When Skies Are Gray is an essential memoir for bereaved parents. In this visceral and visual account, Lindsey Henke shares her experience of pregnancy, loss, and healing. She captures the duality of life, its joys and sorrows, in this authentic, lyrical, and heartfelt story. Sprinkled with wit and wisdom on every page, this honest memoir feels like coffee with a friend. When Skies Are Gray is an invaluable companion on the unpredictable path of motherhood.”

—Alexis Marie Chute, author of the award-winning memoir 

Expecting Sunshine: A Journey of Grief, Healing, and Pregnancy After Loss

“This book is a must-read and a must-gift for anyone who has suffered loss or has loved someone who has. Lindsey’s words are so thoughtful, so poignant, so carefully placed on the page. She gently takes the reader by the hand and doesn’t just show them the way through grief, but walks with them. Lindsey, and her writing, are truly a gift.”

—Galit Breen, codirector of Listen to Your Mother Twin Cities

When Skies are Gray is a powerful story sharing the loss of a baby and the struggle of living on. Written with grace and vivid descriptions of the journey of the loss of Nora, Henke shares her climb back into a life that will never be the same alongside her continued bond and attachment to Nora. Although written mainly for bereaved parents, this book can provide helpful insight to health care providers’ understanding of parental grief. I am privileged to endorse this book.”

—Joann O’Leary, PhD, prenatal parent-infant specialist and author of Meeting the Needs of Parents Pregnant and Parenting After Loss

“Sincere, heartfelt, and real, Henke’s memoir is grief and love woven together, inextricably. Her wisely chosen and descriptive reflections belong to each bereaved parent, and all who support them.”

—Amy Wright Glenn, founder and director of the Institute for the Study of Birth, Breath, and Death and author of Holding Space

“Full of bravery, wisdom, and insight, When Skies Are Gray is a tender retelling of resilience. My heart ached and tears flowed as Lindsey welcomed me, as both a reader and a friend, into her invisible motherhood… While every reader may not know the loss of a child, Lindsey’s words offer something to us all.”

—Rachel Lewis, author of Unexpecting: Real Talk on Pregnancy Loss

“Deeply moving, When Skies Are Gray is a testament to the fierce power of a parent’s love—a force unbreakable even in death. A sterling new addition to the babyloss library, Lindsey Henke’s candid account of loss, despair, hope, and healing should be required reading for the newly bereft. Not to miss!”

—Samantha Durante Banerjee, founder and executive director of PUSH for Empowered Pregnancy

When Skies Are Gray comes from Lindsey’s unique viewpoint, grounded in her own experience as both a grieving mother and therapist whose knowledge couldn’t prepare her for the unfathomable loss she experienced… Bereaved parents reading this memoir and those who have not experienced this loss personally will find her story illuminating while also learning strategies for navigating life and pregnancy after loss.”

—Kiley Krekorian Hanish, founder of Return to Zero Center for Healing


Lindsey Henke is a licensed clinical social worker and psychotherapist specializing in the grief that accompanies life transitions. She founded Pregnancy After Loss Support (PALS), a nonprofit for parents pregnant after a previous perinatal loss or infant death. Her writing has been featured TODAY, Pregnancy and Newborn magazine, Huffington Post and New York Times.

Lindsey lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where during winter she can be found with her nose in a book. The rest of the year she enjoys hiking with her two living children and husband. Find out more about her at her website.

Follow Lindsey on social media: 

Facebook: @LindseyMHenke | Instagram: @LindseyMHenke 

Pregnancy After Loss Support Instagram: @pregnancyafterlosssupport


In an interview, Lindsey can discuss:

  • How she navigated life after stillbirth grief, including learning that grief doesn’t go away, you just make room for it
  • Love and grief’s endurance and resilience when journeying back into pregnancy after baby loss
  • How to harness the power of writing for healing purposes
  • How to discover joy and illuminate life’s path after stillbirth loss
  • Ways to guide mothers who are navigating grief and loss, with compassion and insight

“I had learned grief was just love longing for its beloved—my keepsake for loving.”                              –Lindsey Henke, When Skies Are Gray: A Grieving Mother’s Lullaby

An Interview with

Lindsey Henke

1. How did you navigate the aftermath of your daughter’s stillbirth and find strength to endure?

What helped me the most during the aftermath of my daughter’s death was writing. Putting my pain onto paper and expressing my grief through words became the path toward healing for me. This was further bolstered by a supportive community of fellow bereaved parents. Additionally, I prioritized self-care by nurturing my grief, practicing self-compassion, and purposefully moving through the world at a slower pace in the days, weeks, and months following my loss. Seeking therapy was another crucial step in finding understanding and validation during this challenging time.

2. What guidance would you offer to parents facing a similar loss, based on your own experience?

I believe the most important part of grieving the death of a child as a bereaved parent is honoring the need to sustain the bonds of attachment and continuing the relationship with your child who died. This can be done by incorporating rituals that feel right for you and your family into your daily life, which serves as a form of connection to your child who passed away. These rituals help us, as bereaved parents, realize that our child will not be forgotten. For instance, lighting a candle on your child’s birthday, writing letters to them, or participating in acts of kindness in their honor, can assist in maintaining a connection that validates they did exist and that they do matter. Finding ways to continue this bond with your child who died is probably the most important way of tending to your grief as you move toward healing.

3. In what ways did the process of writing your memoir contribute to your personal healing journey?

Everyone’s path toward healing is different, and research indicates that expressing grief through creative outlets, aligned with an individual’s unique style of grieving, is one way of processing pain. For me, writing became that crucial outlet. It served not only as a means of expressing my grief but also allowed me to continue being Nora’s mom. On the page, I could still parent her daily as I wrote. Sharing her story with the world is my way of publicly proclaiming that I am still a mother, that I am still her mother.

4. What key message or insight do you aspire for readers to glean from the pages of your memoir?

It might sound cliche, but my biggest hope for my memoir is that it can help validate and acknowledge the pain of other bereaved parents, making them feel seen and understood in a world that often shies away from witnessing their suffering.

5. Can you share your post-loss journey and the transformative moments that led to finding peace and joy after the loss of your daughter?

The moment that transformed my mourning into post-trauma growth and, ultimately, acceptance occurred about five months after Nora’s stillbirth when I no longer perceived my grief as suffering. Instead, I began to view my grief as love for my daughter that will never die. This change in perspective was achieved by surrendering to my mourning—the crying fits, the physical ache in my empty arms, and the new normal that sucked. Surrendering to all of it created a shift, which helped me reach the conclusion that my grief is just love for my daughter—a keepsake for loving her. This realization of creating space for grief as love eventually resulted in creating space for joy to resurface in my life, too.

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