Tattered Lace: A Mystery Novel

A mysterious letter brings Lizzy Stewart back to her childhood home, one that was written twenty-five years ago. It's a call for help from John Craig, a close childhood friend. All these years she's believed that he took his own life, but the letter tells a different story. In her search for the truth, Lizzy packs up the secrets she's clung to far too long and returns to her grandparents' deserted, ramshackle farm on Central Oregon's High Desert. But life on the farm challenges her emotional and physical wellbeing. As she attempts to pull together the remnants of her tattered life and solve the puzzle of John's death, she's plagued by bittersweet memories and unsettling threats. And by Sam Craig, John's older brother and her closest neighbor.

Sam Craig has his own problems, all of them sparked by Lizzy's return after a twenty-five year hiatus. From the moment she rises out of the dark corner in the dreary farmhouse, he's hounded by unsettling memories he's tried hard to forget and by the all too familiar hold she has on him. He wants Lizzy gone and his humdrum life back. As he tries to figure out why she's returned and convince her to let him keep his cattle on her land, he realizes that he's the only person who's not privy to the frayed web of life-altering secrets and lies lurking about. There are strange goings-on around the Stewart farm, and Sam is determined to get to the bottom of them. Soon it becomes apparent that he has a bigger problem: if Lizzy doesn't leave the farm, she just might end up dead.

Tattered Lace was selected as one of four finalists in the General Fiction/Novel category in the 2013 Next Generation Indie Book Awards and an Honorable Mention award in the Southern California Book Festival.