The Ghosts of Faithful

2019 INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD FOR RELIGION FICTIONSometimes deadly serious. Sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. The Ghosts of Faithful is the layered novel of a family's clash with betrayal, forgiveness, mercy--and actual ghosts. When The Ghosts of Faithful won First-Runner-up for Poets & Writers Magazine's Maureen Egen Award, it was a novel in progress. Now it is finished and will be my seventh published novel. Here's what Victor La Valle, author, Professor at Columbia, and Judge of the contest had to say about it: "Faithful suggests a broad canvas-a well-rendered local; a promising war of equals in the characters, a clear desire to address/tackle the issues larger than the back and forth, and a clear understanding on the author's part about pacing and clarity. Also, I thought the father's chapter was really funny!"Izzy Collier runs the Food Bank in a town called Faithful, on the banks of the Suwannee River, and is the least amicable of two daughters in a frustrating family; all, keeping secrets of betrayal. Her parents are at odds with both daughters, and with each other. Her sister, always Izzy's competition, is an instable former beauty queen, the wife of a philanderer, and the mother of four. Their ninety-four year-old grandmother believes her dead husband's ghost has returned, accompanied by a little girl-just as Izzy's husband, a defense lawyer, is being mysteriously forced by his boss to effect the acquittal of a teenager accused of the rape and murder of a child. Now, Izzy starts to see her deceased grandfather and the little girl, too. Are the ghosts after revenge, justice, or something greater?