Synopsis

Willy Cherrymill and his stepdaughter Lacey are deeply bruised by a past brimming with unanswered questions. It’s been thirty years since May DuBerry, Willy’s young wife and Lacey’s mother, abandoned them both leaving Willy to raise Lacey alone.

Lacey Cherrymill is smart, stubborn and focused. She’s also a single mother to a young daughter recently diagnosed with a devastating illness. The last thing she needs to think about right now is the betrayal that rocked her childhood. Reluctantly, she has returned to her rural beginnings, a former dairy farm in the Maryland countryside, and to Willy, a man steeped in his own disappointments and all the guilt that goes with them.

Together they will pool their wobbly emotional resources to take care of Tasha, all the while trying to skirt the issue of May’s mysterious disappearance. But try as she might, Lacey can’t leave it alone. Just where is May DuBerry Cherrymill and why did she leave them, and how is it that they have never talked about the wreckage she left behind?

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Excerpt

“The stench of the burning leather seeps from the stove and Lacey has no choice but to breathe it in, recognizing that her mother’s secrets are now her own, that she has filled her lungs with the bitterness of it and the blood that courses her veins has oxygenated on a story that she alone bears the burden of, her heart pumping a tragedy through arteries, invading the threads of capillaries so that May’s story is both deep within Lacey and rising to flush her cheeks.”

–from A HAND TO HOLD IN DEEP WATER 

About the Author

Shawn Nocher (pronounced No-Shay’) is a mentee of Michael Glaser, Elise Levine, William Black, and Richard Bausch. Her compelling short stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including SmokeLong Quarterly, Pithead Chapel, Eunoia Review, and MoonPark Review, and she won an Honorable Mention from both SmokeLong Quarterly and Glimmer Train. Having graduated with an MA in writing from Johns Hopkins, Shawn is currently working there teaching Graduate Independent Studies and Fiction Workshops. She is also currently at work on her second novel, THE PRECIOUS JULES.

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