I recently finished my first novel!

It’s an upper Middle Grade adventure, blatantly inspired by, and written for, my two spunky daughters.

I didn’t set out to write a novel. I was pulled into it while avoiding my dissertation, walking my dog, and dragging my two daughters along on “It’s good for you!” hikes in Discovery Park, the big, semi-wild park near my house in Seattle.

I started thinking about what it would be like to live in the park and I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. And so I started writing.

Here’s what my heroine, thirteen year old Asha Barden, would say about the book:

“Oh, scrud. Let me think…Okay, I’ve got it: This book is about different ways to create a society.  At first I thought that our way, The Commune’s way, was perfect: ordered, harmonious, cooperative. But lately, well, I’m not so sure…”  

Here’s my blurb-in-progress:

One hundred years in the future, in a communal, anti-materialistic culture devoid of electricity, thirteen-year-old Asha Barden helps to maintain Tellings: myths from around the world, historical stories about life before The Bombing, and origin stories about her ancestors’ brave settlement of Discovery Park, a sprawling wilderness within the now-defunct city of Seattle.

As summer approaches, Asha has a choice to make: Will she stay in The Park, studying the commune’s Tellings and building a treehouse with her friends Dare and Lavender? Or will she have the courage to venture beyond Discovery Park?

If she stays, she will please her friends, the Tellers, and her parents who still mourn the loss of her sister five years before. If she goes, she might at last break free from the past and discover new stories of her own to tell.  But what she encounters might threaten the harmony of the community she cherishes.