"My wedding shoes were wrapped in the blue floral shirt that the man who would become my best friend, then my lover, then my husband, then my ex-husband had been wearing the night we met. I remember the touch of his hand on the small of my back, the candlelight throwing shadows over the ocean green of his eyes, and the white tremble of his throat as he swallowed red wine."

"... this morning Mason confessed he had been secretly drinking for most of the previous decade. He had cried a little, told me he was ashamed, and promised he would stop. Relieved, I had emptied all the booze I could find in our house down the kitchen drain — the remnants of an expensive bottle of Scottish whisky, some Chinese cooking wine, three cans of beer and several unopened bottles of decent red. Then I Googled ‘what to do when your husband is a secret drinker’, and the first post to came up recommended I go to an Al-Anon meeting."

Shortlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award, Frogsbone, my first novel, asks how far we must go to keep our dreams alive. Set in New York City in 1908 at a time when the credible and the incredible collide, it is the story of seventeen year old Susanna Hall's quest to find Jem, the horseman to whom she once gave her grandfather's jacket. Charlotte Seymour, judge of the 2023 Caledonia Award, says: “This novel has such a wonderful cast of characters – an unlikely group thrown together in early twentieth-century New York. From English teenager Susannah, newly arrived off the boat at Ellis Island, to her young charge Oliver, an Irish cook, a Russian nurse and more, this is a gorgeous story about immigration, identity and friendship.”

[extract] "... After I sorted our books into separate piles, after I boxed up bedding and dishes and sent half to his new apartment, after I closed off newly emptied rooms and found homes for my cats, after all of this, I baked. Call it obsession or tradition or therapy. While the realtor sent countless emails and legal documents covered the kitchen table, while neighbors visited to ask how they could help and my daughter's school counselor left messages on my cell phone, I baked. Butter and sugar were beaten, eggs were whisked and flour was sieved. I committed myself to the alchemy of it all."​

​