Letters from the Karst, my forthcoming novel (Legacy Book Press, which published my memoir), is my love story to Kentucky. It takes place primarily in the town where I have lived since 1996, Bowling Green, where the mother, Meredith Collins, teaches geography at Western Kentucky University. The husband, David, is a poet who is bi-polar and who dies in a car accident. Each chapter is from the perspective of a family members or someone touched by them, including the three children, Meredith’s brother, her mother, their housekeeper and sitter, a WKU student and friends, as well as Meredith and David themselves.

The motif that weave throughout is caves, cave systems, holes in the ground, cavities in the heart.

I’m excited that my friend, local artist Teresa Christmas (here’s her website for her Art Matters school), is creating an original work for the cover.

I look forward to seeing and holding it in person, and I hope you do, too!

This is a photo of the waterfall at the tail end of the trail at Shanty Hollow, which climbs and curves along the stream that feeds the lake (in part), where you can see wonderful rock houses, which is a term for big but shallow caves at the base or near the base of a cliff. You can see myriad honeycomb holes from erosion in the ceilings. The best time to hike Shanty Hollow is after a rainy spell on a weekday morning when you may not see anyone else. Our dogs have the best time racing up and down the hills and tripling or quadrupling the distance.