COVER REVEAL... at last!

Jul 07, 2026

In the summer of 2007 (or was it 2008?), I was just realizing how important the outdoors were to my mental health. One day I went out to a youth park near my house for a nature walk, my daughter in the Snugli against my chest. The deep peace of the limestone rocks rising across the creek seeped into me. I spread a blanket on the creek bank, and both my baby and I fell asleep.

Later, rested, we took the path to the overhang cave that marked the end of the line if you didn’t have shoes to cross the creek (which I didn’t). And I thought, “Wouldn’t this be a great place to set a book?”

From the simplest beginnings, I present to you…

TRUST FALLS, releasing Nov. 17, 2026

A failed stage actress. A beleaguered pop star. Two cousins with nowhere else to go. And an unscrupulous developer, poised to bulldoze their rural sanctuary.

Charley Dupree’s family Christmas tree farm is everything to her: a place of beauty, a refuge from a world that has offered nothing but betrayal, and home to her mother Penny, her oldest friend Julian, and his cousin Mark, a former baseball star who might just be Charley’s soul mate, if she can learn to trust again. But with foreclosure looming, Charley is short on time and options—until a stroke of luck and an act of kindness bring acclaimed singer-songwriter Maya Santoro to her doorstep, seeking a secluded place to finish her overdue album.

But the more Charley tries to balance Maya’s demand for privacy with her fight to keep the farm afloat, the more her relationships suffer. And when a scheme that should be the farm’s ultimate saving grace goes catastrophically wrong, Charley must decide what matters most: her home, or those she shares it with.

Emotionally resonant and brimming with hope, Trust Falls is a story of friendship, found family, and claiming one’s place in the world.

This book has been through many… many… changes since I asked myself that deceptively simple question. I didn’t even start writing for years after the idea sparked. Some whose names are on the acknowledgments page won’t even recognize the story, it’s changed so much.

But what has remained the same from first iteration to this moment are the characters: Charley, wounded by the world and desperate to preserve her sanctuary; Julian, a sassy and loyal self-adovcate (AKA “adult with Down syndrome”), unafraid to give his oldest friend the what-for; and Mark, whom I dearly hope you will find as swoon-worthy as I do.

And of course, the setting: an old, rainbow-striped farmhouse next to woods that shelter a series of rock formations known as the Sentinels, which are based on the limestone ridge in that park near my house.

In a couple of weeks (God willing and the creek don’t rise) you’ll be able to add TRUST FALLS to your Goodreads to-read list, and I’ll be asking for your help getting the word out. But I wanted the first glimpse of Charley’s world to be for those of you who have stuck with me since A Song For The Road was first released.

Thank you for your enthusiasm, your support, and for continuing to ask, “When is the next book coming out?” That question has kept a fire burning under my butt through all the setbacks of these long intervening years.

Instead of “fresh photography” this week, I thought you might like to see a “best-of” peek at Pinnacles Youth Park, the place where I’ve spent so much time (in my imagination, at least!) in recent years.