Garden of Motherless Children

This book releases on October 13, 2026.

Garden of Motherless Children is a short story cycle set on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, mostly in rural Kent County. Several of the characters are haunted by past traumas and are living on the fringe of society, untethered from mother earth—they are shunned or supported by those in the community who are from here, have come here, or have been brought here.

The integration of these native and non-native people is a dominant theme, along with the healing power of love and the need to lift each other up in order to restore faith and hope in humanity. Some characters find that they need to learn to take risks in the name of love, while others are blindsided by what they thought was love.

They realize that they never really knew their partners and discover that love, like life, can be fragile and fleeting. Overall, these stories come together in a search for meaning in a world that can be cold and dark as well as mysterious and sublime.