Work in Progress

Barefoot Over Broken Glass

A completed, although under constant revision, and, as of yet, unpublished, 90,000-word novel.

The first chapter of her novel, BAREFOOT OVER BROKEN GLASS, was recognized as a semi-finalist in the University of Arizona Book Festival contest 2020. The novel was also a finalist in the Hal Bernard Memorial Award from the Southeastern Writers Association 2020.

Description: In 1961, Clara—a wife, mother, and a hopeful PhD student in history—receives an old photo of herself as a child, attending a lynching and smiling. She has struggled her whole life with her family’s history of racism, and particularly her father’s behavior. He once shattered a beer bottle on the wall behind her after she confessed to telling her Sunday school teacher about the lynching.

When Clara receives news that her father has been injured and may not recover, she travels to her hometown of Zona, Florida, to finally confront him. She’s racked with insecurities about her family’s racism and the impact on her own desire to be a good parent. Clara desires to bring the family secret out into the open but encounters overwhelming obstacles. She learns that without healing from the past, we can’t create our best future. Facing the past includes facing what is in her own heart.