Awards, Press & Interests

Bdóte

The poems and prose from this novel in verse are the dialogue and thoughts between two thirteen-year-olds. Travel back in this Indigenous historical fiction coming-of-age novel in verse from present-day Minneapolis with Evangeline to 1862 Bdóte, where we meet Lily. Both thirteen-year-old Dakota Sioux girls find friendship despite the pain, anguish, and danger that was the internment camp for some of the surviving Dakota women and children following the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, where 38 of their male family members were hanged, in the largest U.S. mass execution. Bdóte, or "'Where the two waters come together," is culturally significant to the Dakota people since it is the center of their spirituality. Carried down through oral tradition, Bdóte is where the Dakota people came into existence here on Earth. It is located at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. Bdóte Perfect for fans of historical fiction, YA lit, or novels in verse. History, mystery, nightmare, destruction, rebirth, and shadow into light all with wonderfully realized characters that struggle to walk between two worlds. Mid-1800’s and present time intertwine with an empowered central character, engaging dialogue, and a captivating setting in this book of poetry and prose. A look into generational trauma from cultural destruction by way of colonialism as seen through beautifully embedded historical elements

Beating Drum of a Broken Heart: A Novel in Verse

A new novel in verse from the author of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls comes this pensive piece about the dangers of growing up an orphaned young adult on an Indian reservation just outside a big city. Using a hodgepodge of prompts, the author challenged herself to write a novel in verse about the travesties seventeen-year-old Esme battles as she waits to age out of the foster care system. Once the fun-loving foster daughter in a vibrant, loving family where her precocious foster sister, Cambria, only a year her senior, led the family in melodious campfires after hiking, silly skating excursions, and boisterous bowling nights, suddenly turned solemn after her foster sister's recent rape, subsequent beating, and being left for dead, Esme keeps the pain and suffering to herself when similar circumstances occur. She doesn't want the drama and attention to siphon any focus from Cambria's case. Cambria, who has been selectively mute due to the shock of the beating, is pregnant and in the depths of acute depression; all the while, Esme needs an empathetic soul and sound advice. But because she keeps the assault and rape close to the cuff, she doesn't even get assistance from her new-to-the-force friend, tribal police officer Jessica Medicine Stone.

BEDRIDDEN & GUTTED TO MINDFUL: A Writer’s Approach to Depression

From riveting and tumultuous trauma-based dissociation that keeps you trapped and challenged, you may find ideas for assisting you to connect more mindfully with the present moment in this part memoir, self-discovery, and self-help. Unlike clinical books that approach the subject from a distance, Bedridden & Gutted to Mindful is written by a depression sufferer who understands that it's more than just "cheering up." The author's decision to write this book stems from an intense desire to help others navigate similar struggles. Bedridden & Gutted to Mindful is a canvas painted with authenticity, allowing readers to relate profoundly and personally to the author's experiences. This fostering of a shared sense of humanity is a mirror through which readers may glimpse their own lost selves. The story delves into the author's emotional struggles and offers insight into their early life. Being adaptable, resilient, and resourceful, while refining problem-solving skills, proved invaluable in navigating life's challenges. The journey is a testament to the strength derived from medicine, therapy, self-reliance, and instinct that triumphed over personal demons. Through the author's fearless storytelling, readers are invited to reflect on their individual journeys, find solace in shared experiences and possibly trauma, and ultimately uncover the strength to overcome life's obstacles. The inclusion of mindfulness, biophilia, and in conjunction with traditional therapies and medicines may also relieve stress, anxiety, and discontent. This simple, accessible, yet profoundly helpful book is a must-read for anyone seeking psychological well-being and peace of mind.

Between Shadows and Lies

This story is loosely inspired by the true account of four young children who lived in a casino records warehouse while their mom worked in order to escape their alcoholic father with homicidal tendencies. Things to do over summer vacation: 1. Run the 5k along the St. Croix River to the water park. 2. Attend the archeological dig at the cliffs above the Minnesota River. 3. Compete in the milk carton boat races during the summer festival. 4. Take scuba lessons and go canoeing during the swim team camping trip. 5. Prevent my life from falling to pieces? What? Meet Hayden Chandler, a fifteen-year-old high school student from the Twin Cities, whose only worry over summer vacation was to meet the boyfriend of her dreams. However, her divorced parents' ongoing battle stood in her way and blocked out the carefree relaxing days she'd expected. Instead, Hayden and her three younger siblings hid from their father: an alcoholic with homicidal tendencies and a penchant for trouble. They escaped his grasp by hiding out in the casino where their mother worked. This is their story

Dancing Without Music

CONTENT WARNING: This book contains themes of mental illness, self-harm, substance abuse, and sexual assault. Two teens. One first love. And the fight to stay alive. Mia Callan and Milo Chatham are both seventeen, falling for each other in the middle of everything falling apart. Mia’s dealing with an eating disorder she can’t shake. Milo’s hiding seizures and depression. They both feel broken—but maybe together, they can start to heal until life hits even harder. Bullying spreads across social media. A party turns dangerous. Trauma, addiction, and isolation start closing in. The darkness they’ve been trying to escape? It’s catching up fast. But this isn’t just a story about pain—it’s about surviving it. Mia and Milo will have to fight for their futures, their recovery, and their love. With the right support, the proper treatment, and each other, maybe they can find hope—and something like happiness—on the other side. A raw, emotional journey through mental illness, trauma, and the power of love that refuses to give up.

Déjà vu

Every nightmare feels like she’s lived it before. Every stranger’s face seems too familiar. Every choice feels like a repeat she can’t escape. Some memories aren’t memories at all. They’re warnings. Eager to start her first real job, Ivy believes she’s leaving her suburban Minnesota high school life behind. But when flashes of events she swears haven’t happened begin intruding on her days and nights, her hard-won stability starts to crack. Each vision pushes her closer to the edge, blurring the line between past and future, dream and waking, sanity and madness, pulling her into a dangerous spiral of obsession, betrayal, and truth too haunting to ignore. As patterns emerge and betrayals surface, Ivy realizes the truth is buried not in what’s ahead, but in a past she doesn’t remember—and someone will do anything to keep it that way. Eighteen-year-old Ivy Lancaster wears beauty like a mask—sunlight hair, suede-blue eyes, skin pale as porcelain. But inside, her mind turns restlessly, spinning through manic heights and crashing lows, leaving only fragments of guilt and shadow behind. Haunted by more than her own reflection, Ivy clings to the story of a murdered classmate, a girl whose absence lingers like smoke in the hallways of memory. Nights blur into endless searches: suicide forums, crime reports, rumor-threaded message boards. Ivy believes the truth is out there, hidden, waiting for her to piece together. But obsession has teeth. It consumes, distorts, and drags her deeper into a labyrinth where danger and desire blur. Will Ivy uncover the face of a killer—or become another story whispered in grief, her name etched into the suburb’s dark folklore? Gripping, atmospheric, and razor-sharp, Déjà vu is a taut psychological thriller about memory’s trickery, fractured identity, and the cost of uncovering what was never meant to be known.

Dreamcatcher: A Hidden World Fairy Tale Fantasy

What if your worst nightmares… led you to the only place you’ve ever truly belonged? Twelve-year-old Dani “Dash” Ash never asked for a life split between silence and storm. With a distant mother who's fighting her own battles, a violent stepfather, and a world that rarely makes space for girls like her, Dash survives the only way she knows how—by escaping through her bedroom window. But one night, everything changes when her fingers brush against the dreamcatcher her grandmother Agnes made for her to fend off nightmares. Instead of catching dreams, it opens a door. Dragged through the clouds and into a staircase of light, Dash tumbles into Baumwelt—a mystical, ancient land where dreamers, misfits, and wanderers arrive through fractured portals... but few ever leave. Here, she meets Winona, fierce and grounded in spirit; Cheske, a quiet boy with secrets as deep as the roots of the trees; and her two unusual animal companions: Charlie, a disabled dog, and Gracie, a blind cat. Together, they face darkness and the creatures that inhabit it. But while Dash grows stronger in Baumwelt, the real world continues to unravel. Each return home brings heavier truths and deeper wounds. It's there that she begins to form fragile friendships in middle school with others, navigating the weight of depression and judgment. In them, Dash sees reflections of her pain... and possibility. As both worlds tilt toward chaos, Dash must face more than monsters and magic—she must confront the broken threads of her own identity, which are woven from her Dakota Sioux heritage, deep family wounds, and a biracial legacy split between worlds.

Echoes at Midnight

A serial killer has resurfaced. Or is it a copycat killer in the north country woods this time around? The two grown children of the previous serial killer victim, and a married park ranger, from Echoes of the Past, return to battle the apparent cause of the suitcase killing spree, but appearances may be deceiving. These murders are being committed by someone hellbent on terrorizing the countryside and its state park, just a jaunt north of the bustling city, with dismembered victims, some of whose body parts are scattered around the exurbs and small towns to terrify more unsuspecting passersby.

Echoes of the Past

Told from two different perspectives, Leah and her brother Jake, this suspense novel tells about when a forty-two-year-old married park ranger and mother of two grown children goes missing during the suitcase killer spree, and everyone believes the serial killer is at fault. A serial killer known to decapitate and dismember his victims, stuffing most of the body parts in a suitcase but leaving the head or a limb around town to frighten unsuspecting passersby. However, unbeknownst to nearly everyone is the fact that over twenty years prior, it was the park ranger who gave birth and abandoned her offspring to an unknown fate. Has destiny caught up with everyone involved, or is there a serial killer in the north country woods? From the authors of Lake of Secrets and Dancing Without Music comes a fast-paced, riveting psychological cat-and-mouse thriller where two young women and their brothers embark on a desperate search for their missing mother and uncover a twisted web of lies. After Leah and Jake’s mother vanish, their father is presumed guilty, but no proof or witnesses remain. There is only doubt for them and their long-lost siblings, none of whom wish to spend the summer searching the woods for what goriness lies there. A police investigation ensues, and the suburbs and the north country vacationland become embroiled in one of the most shocking and perplexing missing person cases. Then there are their mother’s last days, which continue haunting them: the tragedy that connects them and the terrible reckoning that will decide their fates. Its underlying story is about risking everything for the dream of a perfect family—and whether it’s possible to leave the past behind.

Long Since Buried

This quick read is told in alternating timelines thirty years apart and set in Watertown, South Dakota, Long Since Buried is a haunting and twisty tale of a set of twin sisters as they navigate deadly circumstances. In the present, one sister searches to find her newly discovered twin sister's long-ago killer. In the past, the other one descends into despair amid the foreshadowing of her death. Thirty years ago, twelve-year-old Sydney died during a time when she should've been on an illegal deer hunting excursion with her stepfather, but her body was found in an abandoned shack miles away with a sole gunshot wound to the head. Now, a new-in-town writer, who resembles Sydney to a T, is digging up old wounds about what happened that terrible spring day when gossip unfolded in this quaint country town that now longs for closure. But the moment when writer Laci dawdles back in time, old wounds open, and tensions resurface. Everyone has a different version of what happened that day, especially the townsfolk working at the idyllic lakeside resort wedding venue where champagne picnics on the lakeshore and moonlit walks under the stars distract only for a moment. What lurks beneath the blissful town setting? And who exactly is keeping secrets? And how far will they go to keep them hidden? When will what binds them instead cause them to crack? What should have been the happiest day of their lives might end as a day they'd rather forget. No one is as innocent as they seem. Soon, the lines between relationships blur. Danger mounts. Long-held secrets are divulged with every pointed finger and broken confidence until only one truth remains: they won't all make it out alive. The perfect town. The perfect wedding celebrations. The perfect days for revenge.

Of Laughter & Heartbreak

This is the summer of locked doors, fragile rituals, and the ghosts that keep count I’m Stevie Matthews—fifteen, almost sixteen, the kind of girl people whisper about. “Bat-shit crazy,” they say. Maybe they’re right. This summer, the order cracks. Obsessive thoughts tighten like barbed wire, rituals multiply, and the only way forward is a hospital stay I never asked for. Behind those doors, I meet strangers who feel both broken and familiar, each carrying their own secret galaxies of fear and hope. Together, we make a kind of map—messy, jagged, stitched with laughter, unraveling with heartbreak. This is the story of how I learn that friendship can be born from accident, that healing isn’t neat or pretty, and that sometimes the bravest thing is to stay. This book is a tender, unflinching portrait of adolescence, OCD, and the fragile alchemy of survival—equal parts bruised and luminous, like a diary written in ink and ghost light.

Secret Whispers

Poignant, hopeful, and full of emotional power, an unforgettable story in the vein of Words on Bathroom Walls, Impulse, and Ghosts of Harvard about two people learning to love amidst significant challenges, perfect for fans of John Green, Tamara Ireland Stone, and Jennifer Niven. Secret Whispers back cover blurb A house where silence hides fractures. A family stitched together by secrets. A girl whose mind blooms with both brilliance and shadows. A boy whose awkward fire sparks light in her darkness. Together, they navigate the perilous corridors of adolescence— where cruelty wears familiar faces, danger breathes down hallways, and love dares to root itself in fractured soil. Adria is no ordinary junior. Painter. Dreamer. Caretaker of siblings. Keeper of a thousand masks. Beneath it all, her world teeters—haunted by whispers she cannot silence, visions she cannot explain. Schizophrenia coils in her bloodline like a curse, already claiming an uncle and an older brother. Now, it comes for her. Love flickers, improbable and luminous, daring her to believe in something beyond survival. But how do you hold on to hope when your own mind questions what is real? Poignant, lyrical, and unforgettable—Secret Whispers is a haunting portrait of a girl balancing the quiet devastation of mental illness with the unyielding desire to love, to dream, and to endure.

Some Species of Outsider-ness

Piper Quesenberry has always known how to survive: keep your head down, keep people out, and never let anyone see the cracks. Slater Hartmann knows what it’s like to be on the outside too as he’s fighting a body that won’t cooperate and a world that stopped making sense after his life was turned upside down. In a town where everyone knows your name, and your secrets, Piper and Slater aren’t supposed to be friends. But when they stumble upon something dark and dangerous happening behind the neon lights of Whispering Hills Casino, they realize they’ll have to trust each other to figure out the truth and make it out alive. As they navigate whispered rumors, cruel classmates, and the weight of their own battles: Piper’s bipolar disorder and Slater’s fight to recover from Guillain-Barré Syndrome, they find something neither of them expected: someone who sees them for who they are. Heartbreaking and hopeful, Some Species of Outsider-ness is a story about two broken teens finding strength in each other, standing up when it matters most, and learning that sometimes, being an outsider means you’re the only one brave enough to face the truth.

Spirit Pass: Revised and Expanded Edition

Spirit Pass: Revised and Expanded Edition is the compilation of Jessica Stone Novellas #1-3 plus a bonus chapter of the upcoming installment in the series titled A Soul Darker Than Midnight. This fictional collection of novellas delves into missing and murder cases of Native American women and girls. It shows what obstacles exist for tribal law enforcement and the extent to which families will go, like using social media to track their missing person cases. That's because the utter lack of coordination between law enforcement agencies is failing to help the missing and murdered as well as their survivors. This is the tale of tribal Detective Sergeant Jessica (Medicine) Stone and her oftentimes partner, FBI Special Agent Casey Borgreve. What connects a reservation on the edge of a booming city to one tucked deep in rural isolation? How does silence echo differently when it rises from concrete streets versus windswept plains? In this collection of novellas, lives unfold against starkly different backdrops of wealth and want, opportunity and absence. From modern homes designed with every luxury to communities struggling with poverty and limited resources, each story reveals the human heart caught between heritage, survival, and the search for belonging. Through voices both tender and unflinching, these tales illuminate the fractures and resilience of Native life across contrasting landscapes. At once intimate and far-reaching, they trace the fault lines between despair and hope, past and future, memory and possibility. Unsettling, lyrical, and deeply human, this collection invites readers into worlds rarely seen side by side—where every choice carries the weight of history, and every silence tells a story.

Whimsy and Bliss

Abigail Whimsy has always been the dreamer. Lainey Bliss, her best friend since forever, has always been the realist. But the summer before senior year, when Bliss is accepted into a prestigious college program across the country, their world tilts. Desperate to hold on, Whimsy proposes one last adventure: finishing her late grandmother’s “map of thin places,” secret corners of their lakeside town where wonder supposedly seeps through. Bliss reluctantly agrees, certain it’s just another one of Whimsy’s half-finished schemes. But as they climb water towers at midnight, sneak into abandoned libraries, and kayak under strange summer skies, something begins to blur between memory and magic, childhood and adulthood, holding on and letting go. Each “thin place” reveals more than just hidden beauty; instead, it forces them to confront family secrets, unspoken fears, and the terrifying truth of what it means to grow up. Part Paper Towns, part Bridge to Terabithia, Whimsy and Bliss is a luminous coming-of-age novel about friendship as first love, the ache of change, and the kind of magic that lingers long after goodbye.