Rootbound
What if, at the age of thirty-two, you discovered your identity was based on a lie? When Kaya Calloway moved to Arizona for college she deliberately left behind her past—and her furtive, hippie mother—in a remote resort town in Door County, Wisconsin, and until recently, she’d been happy inside the life she had shaped for herself. But now, as her friends all move into the family stage of life, Kaya is paralyzed with doubt. She’s afraid to marry the man she loves, afraid to have children, yet afraid to end up alone. At the heart of Kaya’s fears lies a lifelong ache to know her family—and the identity of her nameless, faceless father—people her mother pretends do not exist.
When Kaya receives the news that, Carlie, her beloved childhood friend, has died, she is blindsided. Drawn by her curiosity to learn what happened, Kaya travels back to her hometown, refusing to take her boyfriend despite his pleas to go along and meet her mother. She goes alone, hoping to convince her mother to open up about the past. But as the secrets begin to unravel—and she begins seeing her childhood memories from a new perspective—Kaya is confronted with depths of her mother’s betrayal. The devastating truth sends Kaya on a self-destructive spiral, alienating her from the people she cares about. Can Kaya find forgiveness? Or is she destined to repeat her mother’s mistakes and end up alone?
Set in 2002, with flashbacks to Kaya’s upbringing during the free love era of the 1970s, Rootbound immerses readers into the life of a protagonist on the precipice of life-altering decisions, probes a mother-daughter relationship fractured by secrets and lies, and offers tender glimpses into the inexplicably intense bonds of childhood friendship.
Actively seeking agent representation.
Taming the Camel
Is the overgrown house next door simply the home of a surly recluse, or is the woman who lives there a witch, as Rae’s neighbor Danny claims? Taming the Camel explores the intersecting stories of eleven-year-old Rae Van Oesterlin, recently uprooted when her family relocated from snowbound suburban Chicago to Phoenix, and Alva Becker, whose lifetime of hardship and loss has alienated her from friends and family.
Rae herself is alienated–struggling to fit in at her new school and make sense of her parents’ fracturing relationship. When Mrs. Becker develops an inexplicable attachment to Rae’s precocious little brother, Rae’s overactive imagination gets the best of her. What she does in the name of saving her brother will forever bind her fate to Mrs. Becker’s.
Taming the Camel is both the poignant story of an unlikely friendship and the struggles of two families, spanning the twentieth century.
Currently under revision.
Lisa Binsfeld author 