Welcome… to my world of exploring the complexities of human nature. 

Several years ago, after more than a decade of writing children’s books, I tip-toed through a new door with great trepidation and began writing women’s fiction.  To say that it intimidated me is only half right.  The idea of doing a mountain of research, including long, back-aching hours of scouring the internet and spending an enormous amount of time sitting down with people to hear their stories for inspiration and information in order to write mine, was enough to scare me away from trying it for many years.  But, there was a story there that I knew had to be written and the only way to stop that terribly annoying little voice from whispering in my ear to just go ahead and jump into that new realm was to just go ahead and jump into that new realm.  And what I found was that I loved it.

With every new story, I cross an unfamiliar threshold or look through a dusty window into the unknown.  I never know who my mind might have me meet along the way, but I’m excited to get to know the many different characters and anxious to see the places they would have me see. They tell me their stories as I bang away on the keyboard, oftentimes hardly able to keep up as their tales unfold.   It’s an exciting world, this world of women’s fiction, and I hope you’ll enjoy the many different journeys with me. 

So, let’s step through another door and be on our way…

  • As the 20th century dawns, the world is transformed in dizzying ways. But nestled in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains is a place, and a family, out of time—where one young girl will grow to face the challenges of each generation before her—and discover whether she has the strength to overcome them…

    The eldest surviving daughter of Anna Guinn, Rachel rarely ventures far from her home in the Appalachians, aside from an occasional trip into town to trade a penny for a peppermint stick. Sometimes she yearns for more, but as much as she fears her mother’s unstable mind, she is anchored by the strength of her grandmother, Willa. Freed from an abusive marriage, Willa holds the family together through hardship, all the while fulfilling her role as keeper of her neighbors’ carefully guarded secrets—the most painful of which may be her own.

    In this isolated, eccentric world where people depend on moonshine to put food on the table, hang talismans to chase away ghosts—and tragedy can strike as suddenly as a coiled copperhead—Rachel wonders what life has in store. Most of all, she worries whether she and her sister have inherited the darkness that lurks inside their mother. Her one respite is the town’s apple orchard, the ally she finds there—and the revelation that she can take her destiny into her own hands, decide what to leave behind—and what is truly worth carrying into the future…

  • From author Janie DeVos comes a poignant and richly detailed novel set in 1950s North Carolina, where one young woman struggles to save her own life—and finds the strength to truly live it.

    When Kathryn Cavanaugh steps over the threshold of the Pelham Sanatorium in 1954, she has no idea when, or if, she will ever leave it again. Despite the rise of promising new treatments, Tuberculosis is still feared and often fatal. But twenty-four-year-old Kate has proven her resilience before, leaving her Blue Ridge Mountain home for a very different life in the city with her ambitious attorney husband, Geoffrey. For the sake of her family, especially her young son, she’s determined to get healthy again.

    The sanatorium is a strange battlefield, with every patient fighting for survival amidst a numbing routine of tests, treatment, and enforced rest. Kate quickly finds camaraderie among the women on her ward—and a growing kinship with fellow patient Philip McAllister. As weeks pass, the hospital’s confines come to offer more independence than Geoffrey’s preoccupation with status ever allowed. And with this surprising new discovery comes the courage to contemplate the choices she has made—and, perhaps, the chance to breathe freely at last…

The Glory Land Series.


An interesting and enjoyable look at a different side of Florida.” —Library Journal

  • In turn-of-the-century Florida, a family comes of age, and a daughter finds her destiny entwined with a land as full of promise as it is danger.

    The steamy, sweltering banks of Florida’s Ocklawaha River don’t look much like Glory Land to young Eve Stewart, despite her father’s proclamation. But it’s here that Eve, her three siblings, and their parents will settle in July, 1875. Within a few years, Eve’s father, Hap, has made good on his assurances. They have a large, weathered clapboard house and a comfortable life, thanks to Hap’s job on a steamboat.

    Eve and her twin sister, Ivy, are blossoming into young women. Yet as Ivy grows more involved in medicine making under the tutelage of a neighboring black woman, her path leads away from the family.

    Eve, an aspiring writer, loves her home though she longs to see the wider world beyond its swamps and shores. But when she discovers a secret Ivy’s been keeping, Eve must decide between protecting the family name or saving her sister. With the help of a half-Creek Indian tracker, Max Harjo, Eve sets out to find Ivy, beginning a journey that will dare her to follow her ambitions and her passion wherever they lead.

  • In the earliest days of the last century, a Florida family strives to build a legacy in the burgeoning new city of Miami .

    In South Florida, a region that offers some of life’s richest beauty as well as some of its harshest conditions, a city is rising. Eve and Max Harjo moved to Miami after the great freeze of 1894 wiped out their citrus grove. Eve is busy writing for the Miami Metropolis, Miami’s first newspaper, while Max salvages the ships that fall victim to Florida’s dangerous reefs and violent storms.

    Their nineteen-year-old daughter Eliza dives to bring up the salvaged treasures, uncaring that it is hardly woman’s work. And her stubborn determination to educate local Seminoles—male and female—draws the ire of the tribe’s chief. But Eliza’s greatest conflict will be choosing between two men: a brilliant inventor working on the prototype for a new motorboat, and a handsome lighthouse keeper from the northwest. When a massive storm unleashes its fury on South Florida, it reveals people’s truest characters and deepest secrets, changing lives as drastically as it changes the coastal landscape . . .

  • Miami in the 1920’s is a city with two faces. By day, it’s a dazzling beacon of industry; when the sun goes down, neon signs flash and decadence reigns.

    As Prohibition takes hold, speakeasies and illicit distilleries spring up alongside lavish mansions. Nothing can slow the influx of tourists thirsty for strong liquor—or quell the greed of those eager to provide it.

    Caught between these two worlds, and two very different men, beautiful Lily Strickland throws herself into re-building her grandparents’ Art Deco hotel while reveling in everything the city’s nightlife has to offer a blonde-bombshell flapper. When her shy, unassuming sister is caught up in Miami’s vicious mob underworld, Lily turns to the doctor she’s loved for years. But it may be up to a young pilot and former rumrunner to save her sister and salvage the legacy her family has worked so hard to build.

“Excellent read...having lived in Florida for 39 years, it was interesting to read about what life was like 130+ years ago. Having traveled through most of North & Central FL, I could picture the areas in the story. The story was fast paced & difficult to put down. I kept turning pages to see what was going to happen.”

— Amazon Customer Review