The August Row: An Unheld Hours Novel (Book 1)

Some inheritances can't be sold. Some can't be survived.When Maren Vale loses her museum career and her estranged mother in the same season, the last thing she wants is the dying Virginia peach orchard left in her name. She drives down to sign the papers, take the developer's generous offer, and leave before August can touch her.Then she finds the fenced row her mother forbade her to enter. One row of old trees that returns a lost memory to anyone who walks it at dusk - and takes a present-day memory in exchange.The orchard remembers what Maren spent twenty-six years trying to forget: the summer everything burned, the secrets her mother kept, and Theo Reyes, the first love she believed had abandoned her. Theo is still here. Still careful. Still holding the truth she's owed.Every memory the row gives back costs her one she can't choose to keep. And the closer Maren comes to the whole story, the more she has to decide what love is worth when remembering it might cost her the life she built to escape it.A luminous, emotional novel of memory, grief, and second-chance love, THE AUGUST ROW is the first book in The Unheld Hours - standalone magical-realism romances for readers who believe ordinary places hold extraordinary echoes.Every unheld hour remembers the life it almost became.

Pages: 288, Paperback, Independently published