Learning to Breathe Again: A Novel (The Work of Becoming Trilogy Book 1)

Two women. Lives they didn't choose. A friendship that dares them to want more.

Miami, 1933. Mary Simons was supposed to fill her scrapbook with photos of her baby's first smiles, locks of fine hair, and handwritten milestones. Instead, she records respiration rates and temperatures, hoping science can save what love can't. When her baby dies, the future she imagined dies with her.

A thousand miles north, Elena Wagner has spent years burying the girl who nursed her mother and sister through their final days. Silk dresses and a husband who adores her keep the grief at arm's length. But an unplanned pregnancy, and a Depression that won't end, threaten to pull her back into the one role she swore she'd never play again.

A chance encounter at the Chicago World's Fair brings the two women together. When circumstances relocate them both to the sugarcane fields of Depression-era Florida, an unlikely friendship becomes the one thing they can't afford to lose. In a time when women are expected to endure in silence, Mary and Elena must decide: keep performing the lives they're supposed to live, or risk it all for the women they might still become.

A character-driven novel about loss, friendship, and courage. Sometimes the hardest thing isn't holding on. It's learning to breathe again.

For readers of Fiona Davis, Kristina McMorris, Marie Benedict, and Lisa Wingate.