In the Finding Herself Series, we travel to the (fictional) small town of Glenn Lake, Tx. Here we will meet the residents, and they will share their stories with you. Stories of survival, strength, loss, and love. Friendships will form, be tested, and grow stronger. Families will break apart, others will expand, grow, and learn together what it means to be family.
Grab a box of tissues and a cup of tea, then join the Glenn Lake residents as they share little pieces of their lives with you.
Mandy’s Story: Courage
A young woman fights for the only family she’s ever known in this emotional story of resilience, hope, and unexpected love.
Mandy Walker learned early that the only person she could count on was herself. With an alcoholic mother who swings between neglect and cruelty, seventeen year old Mandy has spent her life protecting her younger half-siblings, Missy and Davy, from the chaos around them.
When their mother disappears without warning, Mandy thinks she can finally give the children the stable life they deserve. But one visit from Child Protective Services threatens to tear apart the only family she has left.
Determined to prove she can provide for her siblings, Mandy pours herself into building her cleaning business while navigating a legal system that sees her age before her capability. And then there’s Jimmy, the children’s father, whose return to Glenn Lake stirs feelings she never expected and isn’t sure she’s ready to face.
In a story about the courage to hope when hope has always let you down, Mandy must learn that strength isn’t just about surviving. Sometimes it’s about letting yourself be loved.
Mandy’s Story is the first book in the Finding Herself series, featuring strong women overcoming impossible odds in the small Texas town of Glenn Lake.
Books can be read in any order, but best for characters development to be read in order.
Becca’s Story: Purpose
A mother’s journey from rock bottom to redemption proves it’s never too late to become the person you were meant to be.
Becca has spent her life running from pain. From the trauma of her youth. From the choices that cost her everything. From the children she was never equipped to raise. But you can only run so long before your past catches up with you.
When a violent car accident nearly kills her, Becca wakes up to a world that has already condemned her. The town she’s lived in her whole life sees her as a villain, and the man responsible for her injuries walks free while she faces their judgment. With her children in someone else’s care and her reputation in ruins, she has nothing left to lose.
Recovery from addiction is brutal. The meetings. The cravings. The shame that never quite fades. But for the first time in her life, Becca begins to find something she never knew she needed: purpose. A job at the local bakery. A chance to be present for her children. And an unexpected reunion with the one man who ever truly loved her, the man she let go decades ago because she was too scared to hold on.
Becca’s journey proves that our worst chapters don’t have to be our last ones. Sometimes hitting bottom is just the beginning.
Becca’s Story is the second book in the Finding Herself series, continuing the story of the Walker family in Glenn Lake, Texas.
Books can be read in any order, but best for characters development to be read in order.
Caroline’s Story: Serenity
A beautiful story of love, loss, and the unexpected ways healing finds us when we least expect it.
To the residents of Glenn Lake, Caroline Graham is the elegant widow who’s always ready with a kind word and a cup of tea. To Mandy Walker, she’s the woman who saved her life, offering sanctuary and steady guidance through the darkest years of her childhood.
But Caroline carries secrets of her own.
In 1968, she was a young bride with a husband serving in Vietnam and a baby on the way. When tragedy struck twice in devastating succession, Caroline lost both the love of her life and the son she’d barely had time to hold. Fifty years later, the grief still lingers in quiet moments, in the photographs she keeps hidden, in the ice blue dress she cannot bear to throw away.
When Mandy asks to hear her story, Caroline finally shares the memories she’s kept locked away for decades. From her whirlwind romance with Walter to the friendship that helped her survive, from the career that gave her purpose to the small Texas town that became her home, Caroline’s journey reveals how loss shapes us but doesn’t have to define us.
A story about the enduring bonds between women, the courage it takes to keep living after loss, and the healing that comes from being seen.
Caroline’s Story is the third book in the Finding Herself series, set in Glenn Lake, Texas.
Books can be read in any order, but best for characters development to be read in order.
Kate’s Story: Survival
She didn’t just survive. She built a life worth protecting.
Kate Shaw knows what it means to be invisible.
For years, she made herself small in a marriage that demanded her silence. But when her husband’s rage turned toward their daughter, Kate found a strength she didn’t know she possessed. She grabbed Olive and ran, leaving Oklahoma behind for the safe haven of her parents’ home in Glenn Lake, Texas.
Three years later, Kate has built something beautiful from the wreckage. She’s finished her degree, bought a small house just blocks from her parents, and created a life where her daughter can grow up surrounded by love. She has Mandy and Becca, friends who feel more like sisters. She has Wednesday coffee dates at Mary’s Bakery and neighbors who show up when it matters. She might even be ready to open her heart to Ty, a man who looks at her like she hung the moon.
But some monsters don’t stay buried.
When Evan reappears, determined to reclaim what he believes is his, Kate must face her greatest fear. This time, she won’t run. This time, she has too much to lose. And this time, she has an entire community standing beside her.
A powerful story of resilience, motherhood, and the healing power of found family, Kate’s Story: Survival is the fourth book in the Finding Herself series, set in the beloved fictional town of Glenn Lake, Texas.
Books can be read in any order, but best for characters development to be read in order.
Claire’s Story: Strength
She thought she knew what friendship meant. Then her best friend taught her what betrayal felt like.
Claire Dixon thought Valerie Mulroney was her sister in every way that mattered.
They’d been best friends since childhood, inseparable through braces and heartbreaks and late night confessions. When Claire went off to UT Austin with her boyfriend Diego and her best friend by her side, she thought she had everything figured out.
She didn’t know that everything was about to fall apart.
Now Claire is back in Glenn Lake, living with her grandfather, working as a house cleaner, and pretending she’s fine. She tells herself the past doesn’t matter anymore. She tells herself she’s moved on.
Then Mandy assigns her to clean the Mulroney house. For a graduation party. And a baby shower.
For Valerie.
Who is pregnant with Diego’s baby.
Suddenly, all of Claire’s carefully constructed walls come crashing down. She can keep running, or she can finally face the truth she’s been hiding from. But when an unexpected crisis throws her into Valerie’s path, Claire discovers that strength isn’t about holding grudges or pretending the pain doesn’t exist. Sometimes strength means staying when everything in you wants to leave.
A moving story about betrayal, healing, and the complicated nature of forgiveness, Claire’s Story: Strength is the fifth book in the Finding Herself series.
Books can be read in any order, but best for characters development to be read in order.
Frannie’s Story: Grace
After three years of putting her life on hold, she’s finally ready to ask: what does Frannie want?
Everyone in Glenn Lake calls Frannie Dailey a saint.
For three years, she devoted herself to caring for her husband Norm through his cancer treatment. She managed the medications, drove to the appointments, held his hand through the darkest nights. She did everything a good wife should do.
But saints don’t count the days until it’s over. Saints don’t dream about running away. Saints don’t stand at the kitchen window wondering who they might have been if they’d made different choices.
The truth Frannie can’t tell anyone is that she almost left. The night before Norm came home with his diagnosis, she had a suitcase open on the bed. An apartment picked out across town. A speech prepared. And then everything changed.
Now Norm is in remission, and Frannie is drowning in a life she doesn’t recognize. When her best friend Caroline offers her an escape, two weeks in London, Paris, and Rome, Frannie says yes before she can talk herself out of it.
What she discovers across the ocean will challenge everything she thought she knew about love, forgiveness, and the person she sees in the mirror. Because finding grace isn’t just about extending it to others. Sometimes the hardest person to forgive is yourself.
An honest, emotional story about marriage, identity, and the courage it takes to start over, even after forty-seven years, Frannie’s Story: Grace is the sixth book in the Finding Herself series.
Books can be read in any order, but best for characters development to be read in order.
Ashley’s Story: Enough
Everyone always said Ashley Fontaine had it all.
The handsome husband. The three beautiful children. The big house in the right Chicago suburb, the holidays that ran like clockwork because she made them run that way.
But having it all isn’t the same as being seen. And somewhere between the school pickups and the dinner parties and the long years of putting herself last, Ashley disappeared.
Then the children grew up and moved away, and the house went quiet. Too quiet. She and Troy could pass whole days barely speaking, the silence broken only by his sharp little comments and the easy laughter in his voice the moment a friend or a coworker called. Ashley had never felt so alone as she did sitting in the same room as her own husband.
When her mother leaves on a long-awaited trip to Europe, Ashley jumps at the chance to come home to Glenn Lake and help her recovering father. Helping her parents is the reason she gives everyone. The silence she is running from is the one she keeps to herself. Just for a few weeks, she tells herself. She rents a little house a few streets from her parents and starts unpacking one box at a time.
And in the slow rhythm of the town that still remembers the girl she used to be, Ashley finally lets herself face the truth. About her marriage. About Troy. About the woman she set aside so long ago she isn’t sure she can find her again.
She can keep pretending. Or she can start over at almost fifty, with nothing figured out and everything left to learn.
Because somewhere along the way, Ashley forgot the one word that could save her. Enough. Enough of the silence. Enough of the invisible years. Enough of making herself small so someone else could feel large. And, just as she is, simply enough.
An honest, emotional story about marriage, motherhood, and the courage it takes to start over, even at almost fifty, Ashley’s Story: Enough is the seventh book in the Finding Herself series.
Books can be read in any order, but best for characters development to be read in order.
Future Stories in this series:
These are working titles, and the final titles may change slightly. No release date has been finalized yet.
Denise Ann’s Story: Pivot
Valerie’s Story: Tender
Rosa’s Story: Still
Laura’s Story: Pause
Stephanie’s Story: Rebuild
Mary’s Story: Fierce
Emma’s Story: Untangle
Joyce’s Story: Encore
Virgina’s Story: Thaw
Paula’s Story: Again