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PETRICHOR PRIZE WINNER

FOR

FINELY CRAFTED FICTION

COMING FROM

REGAL HOUSE PRESS

FALL 2025

            

Begin with a tiny cottage on a vast and ancient lake.

 

Franny Hale raised her children in this cottage more than a century ago

and died decades later putting her garden to rest. Now her family has sold it

to a woman looking for a simpler life and here is Franny to encounter

the new occupant, to tip paintings, chill the room, push papers to the floor,

and to appear herself, again and again, shadowy, restless, and wanting.

 

The narrator does not reveal her name though she shares her solitude,

her memories, and her marveling at the mysteries of this life and the next,

the wavering line between what is here and what is not.

 

Throughout the summer, old windows get repaired and painted,

bits of Franny’s life are discovered and her garden replanted.

As the days shorten and migrating birds stop to rest,

the ghost grows more faint, her presence diminishing perhaps.

 

Or— perhaps not.

 

Tell any story you choose, fill it with tragedy, strip off garments,

destroy, march over mountains if you like,

eventually it will come to some end, a last breath or scream or sigh.

 

But is that the end?

 

 

"There’s a sweetness here of the finest, non-cloying variety that sneaks up on you, leaves you rooting for our hero, and, finally, leaves you breathless."  

Andrew Furman, author of Jewish & The World That We Are

"With a voice as ethereal and luminous as the novel’s subject, Kathleen Novak lulls the reader across the thin line between here and the hereafter, exploring how we show up for others—or don’t, creating our own fleeting realities."

 Margaret Hutton, author of If You Leave

"Come Back, I Love You is a poetic, gothic pentimento of leaving and finding home."

 Carolyn Colburn, author of Morlocks in the Basement and Minimum Maintenance

"Here is a novel of easy warmth and great charm, dealing with love, loss, and a ghostly presence demanding attention."

Faith Sullivan, author of The Cape Ann & many others

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