Ivaleena

From Brenda K. Thompson, 2026 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Grand Prize Winner for Fiction for *Alice Anyway*.

She followed a sign that promised work.

He promised travel. Fame. A new name.

Ivy Lee thought he might see her art.

But he saw a face the world would pay to look at.

In the Kentucky Appalachians of the 1940s, eighteen-year-old Ivy Lee longs for a life beyond The Glens. She carries a sketchbook, a restless heart, and the quiet hope that someone, somewhere, will see what she can create.

Then the Great Meridian Show rolls into Culpepper.

Beneath the lanterns and painted canvas, a carnival man gives her a new name: Ivaleena, the Most Beautiful Girl in the World.

Soon she's standing beneath the lights, admired by strangers, loved by crowds, and printed on posters from town to town. But the farther she travels from home, the more the show begins to close around her.

The name grows larger.

The crowds grow louder.

And Ivy Lee begins to disappear.

Because the world has fallen in love with Ivaleena.

And Ivaleena was never really Ivy.

Tender, atmospheric, and quietly haunting, *Ivaleena* is a novel about identity, longing, art, and the quiet courage it takes to reclaim a life that no longer feels like your own.