Done With...

A wild soul struggling to survive…

She left everything behind to fight for a life of her own.

Desperate for independence, a woman flees the oppressive expectations of her husband and returns to her hometown in the Adirondack Mountains. As she fights to survive and create a life of her own, she reunites with her quirky friends, her angry sister, and an adopted stray cat who all challenge her beliefs about life, love, and family.

The popularity of my Grayson series inspired me to carve out a new niche with a contemporary novel…

Readers tell me it’s the emotional depth in my stories that makes them feel connected with my characters and draws them to my books, which made me want to explore emotional themes in a contemporary setting. I’ve set my new novel in the beautiful Adirondack Mountains. Although I created the fictional town of Dunwith, the breathtaking scenery of the Adirondack Mountains is real.

I believe we all have Done With moments in our life when we wish we could walk away from whatever ails us (a bad job, a toxic relationship, a life not of our own making, or something small and seemingly insignificant to others…). But what would it take to really do it? To really walk away and leave everything behind?

Is it courage? Or desperation? Or something else entirely that would motivate a person to leave and not look back?

The setting for Done With…

Kate spent her childhood here with her friends. Then her family imploded, and she left them all behind without a word of explanation.

Now she was back… and she had to stay. She had to fix what she’d broken.

There are moments in life when we must step outside our comfort zone, embrace the unknown, and challenge ourselves to do the thing we fear. Kate is faced with these challenges every day…

“Suddenly, it felt as if the wind were peeling away years of my life, removing the wrinkles of time that had aged me. It pummeled my chest as if saying wake up! I remembered how it felt to be young and adventurous and courageous. My spirit soared as if I were standing on the handlebars, stretching my arms wide to embrace the wind… this moment… this life… I howled like a she-wolf, mentally breaking the leash that had tethered me to a world foreign to my nature. I would no longer hide my claws. I was meant to roam free, to burn with passion, and to stand and live in my own way.”

Research notes:

I chose the Adirondack Mountains as the setting for Done With because its “forever wild” beauty is the perfect metaphor for the human spirit — and the heroine’s journey to reclaim her wild, authentic self. 

Lake Placid, NY

The 6-million-acre Adirondack Park consists of several mountain ranges, deep gorges, pristine lakes, winding rivers, and spectacular waterfalls. Half the land is privately owned, and several million acres are protected for conservation. Although I created a fictional town for my book, I spent some time visiting Saranac Lake, Tupper Lake, and Lake Placid, host of the 1980 Winter Olympics, and Whiteface Mountain, the fifth-highest mountain in New York State, to get a feel for where my heroine would have grown up. What a gorgeous place! Truly, the views of lush forests and sparkling lakes nestled in the mountains are breathtaking.

The Adirondack Mountains also offer a variety of hiking trails, lakes for swimming or boating, horseback riding, rail biking, and even cliff jumping. You’ll find several wonderful wineries and breweries in the Adirondacks (and in my fictional town of Dunwith), as well as Great Camps built by wealthy families in the late nineteenth century.

If you have time for a bit of fun, check out the Olympic Jumping Complex in Lake Placid. I honestly can’t imagine rocketing off that ski jump (standing 240′ high – that’s a 22-story building) at warp speed and soaring “the length of a football field” before hitting the ground (hopefully on skis). OMG!

I fell in love with the Adirondacks, and I hope you will too when you read Done With.

Have you experienced a Done With moment?

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