Local Honey Cover

NEW RELEASE - COMING SOON

Local Honey

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 Coming This Summer – 2025

My new novel, Local Honey; set in 1951

The 1950s were a pivotal time in America.
The country was still recovering from the trauma of the Second World War, while also entering a period of great economic expansion. But the decade also came with strict social rules and crippling class divisions. Not everyone was able to participate in the new prosperity,

While the book is at times serious, humorous and touching, there is a cloud of desperation and moral ambiguity that hangs in the background. It’s the story of Becky Bivens, who returns to her hometown of Riverbend, Massachusetts, ten years after her family fled – because her mother’s crimes were uncovered.  The women who find refuge at the Bivens farm become social outcasts who find themselves facing some stark choices.

Becky wants to build a simple produce stand on the property where she once lived. Her intentions are to raise bees, sell honey, and restore her shattered life, while also helping other displaced women.

Local Honey is also the story of Jim Yarrow, a wounded World War II veteran who felt his bitterness fade when he found love, family, and a calm life as a small-town police officer. He never expected the woman he loved during his senior year of high school to suddenly reappear in his life.

Becky has lived a hardscrabble existence. Her struggles to survive helped her understand why her mother made some troubling and provocative choices years before. She soon learns those choices still reverberate in Riverbend, where some people believe the Bivens Farm should never rise again.

The story told in Local Honey is part love triangle, part class struggle, and part dreamy window into the lost New England of the 1950s. The scenes range from rural farms, to the gritty slums of Boston, to brief flashbacks of battlefields. I believe readers who enjoyed books such as The Bridges of Madison County, Where the Crawdads Sing, or The Keeper of Stars will also enjoy Local Honey.

COMPLETE SERIES

The Puzzle Box
Chronicles...

is a six-book series – a sweeping epic sent in 1890s America. It captures the essence of a unique time in American history. The industrial revolution is well underway, and it’s now the dawn of the age of electricity and radio.

Series 1

A creative but troubled scientist...

Victor Marius is lost in a shipwreck off the coast of Cape Cod. But before he disappears beneath the waves he manages to release a strange box that he hopes will protect his legacy and his ideas. The box found by Amanda Malcolm, a woman who is considering leaving her abusive husband and fleeing to Boston. What’s inside the Puzzle box launches her on a journey of pain and discovery that takes her across the country and back. Along the way, she meets Plains Indians, ex-slaves, riverboat charlatans, and secretive workers who champion the U.S. labor movement.

At a time...

when access to electricity is spreading across the country like a wave, she also meets inspired engineers and Montana miners who dig deep to feed the country’s insatiable demand for copper.

Amanda has survived many things in her short life, but it’s not clear if she will be able to survive the first year of the last decade of the 19th century.

Series 3

Get the full 6 book series on Amazon

A sweeping epic that takes place across the summer of 1991.