The Summer We Learned To Fly Independently Published

North Carolina, 1999
When 19-year-old Elise Monroe loses her mother without warning, the only trace she leaves behind is a cryptic inscription, hidden inside the pages of a secret book. Grieving and alone, Elise follows her trail south to North Carolina, chasing a dangerous family history that has long been buried.

What she finds is a land thick with secrets-and the shadow of a decades-old crime.

A chance encounter leads her to Adrian Evers, a reclusive man living deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains, guarding wounds of his own. In his riverside cabin off the French Broad River-once home to a long-forgotten diving horse show-Elise finds unexpected refuge. As the summer deepens, the wilds of the hills, the steady belonging of the horses, and Adrian himself begin to mend something fractured inside her.

But the past never stays quiet for long.

As Elise works to resurrect the long-dormant show, the truth begins to surface-about the land, about Adrian, and her own tangled legacy. When everything unravels, Elise must confront the most challenging question of all: can the woman she truly is-and the woman she is becoming- ever coexist?

A lush, lyrical novel of healing, legacy, and the kind of love that calls you home. A true Southern classic in the making