About Anna.
I write about what people carry into a room and what they will do to keep it hidden.
My novels move between the Appalachian South and the private worlds of women who made their own histories. I am drawn to families, loyalties, desire, and the accounts people give of their own lives. I want to know what happens when those accounts no longer hold.
The Natalie Series imagines a real woman learning to live beyond the future chosen for her. The Keeper follows Rachel through love, memory, and the cost of holding on. The Hollar brings questions of identity into the intimate pressures of family and place.
I am interested in the ordinary things that make a life recognizable: a room, a meal, a familiar voice, a task someone has done for years. Those things can become difficult to look at when something changes.
Place should know something.
The South has shaped how I think about family, belonging, labor, silence, and the past people bring with them. In every setting, place matters because it changes the choices a character believes are available to her.
Women who made other lives.
History preserves names, dates, books, portraits, and letters. It rarely preserves the full experience of living through a decision. My historical fiction begins in that gap, while the accompanying archive keeps the documented record separate from what I imagine.
Explore the Natalie seriesI live with books nearby, coffee close at hand, and a dog often convinced that whatever I am doing can wait.
Reading, animals, strong coffee, and weather dramatic enough to interrupt the day all have their place. But the work always returns to the page.