Stiff Hearts

First Place winner in the 2022 Somerset Awards of the 2022 Chanticleer International Book Awards. 5-Star, "Highly Recommended" Rating from Chanticleer Book Reviews in 2023. International Impact Award for Women's Fiction 2021.

2nd Edition

Redemptive coming of age novel about a naive Missourian in 1949 who moves to New York City to escape her abusive mother.

At the end of twenty-year-old Gillian Rysert's train journey from St. Louis to New York City in 1949, she believes she's escaped her narcissistic mother Hannah. Magnetized to violence by her mother and bereft of her father, Gillian no longer lets love in. So far, Gillian's reserve has shielded her from risking heartache.

But now Gillian's surrounded by other Greenwich Village incomers suffering the aftermath of two World Wars and, like the penetrative reach of stained glass, they embolden her stiff heart to open. Among them: Latvian freedom fighter Jānis Dieviņš, Latina sophisticate Dolores Valencia, and the boas and pearls proprietor of Levitsky's Treasure Trove.

Heart-felt relationships with these characters packs some risks though. Gillian could become collateral damage of her lover's anti-Communist mission, destroy herself before she can stand fully in her power, and perish in the trap her mother sets for her.