Selected Works 

 Candlewood

~An excerpt from Evelyn’s forthcoming novel: We weren’t allowed to have children. We weren’t allowed to give flesh to a new creation. We weren’t allowed to love, not like that. Unless we broke every rule in the book. Unless he died to the priesthood. Unless I lived in the shadows, shrouded alive.

St. Croix Valley, 1977

Gifted teacher Meg Joyce has a simple plan: marry well, make a home, guide her students with developmental delays. And, overcome the taboos racked up by her wrong-side-of-the-tracks family. She’s almost there. Until her fiancé caves to his dad’s disapproval, and a teacher strike threatens her toehold on security. In a world where women’s opportunities are limited, Meg takes a job visiting the homebound for St. Michael the Archangel parish—parishes don’t go on strike.

Far from landing in a holy refuge, Meg finds herself caught in the crosshairs between a chameleon-like priest from prayer group who comes onto her like a barfly, threatening worse, and the salt of the earth priest who turns her world upside down when they fall in love.

Against the backdrop of a Catholic Church reeling from Vatican II’s changes to long-held traditions, and secular impacts from the sexual revolution, Meg grapples with the underbelly of an institution she once trusted, a crisis of faith in God, and a reckoning with her dreams.