Welcome

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Nurses feel everything.

Training simply teaches us how to hide it.

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I have been a lot of things.

A nurse.

A daughter.

A wife.

A mother of four.

And now, at last, a debut novelist.

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I was born on June 6, 1966, the year of the Fire Horse, said to produce women who are stubborn, independent, and difficult to contain. That description has followed me my entire life. I have decided to stop apologizing for it.

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For more than thirty years I worked at the bedside, witnessing birth, death, and the fragile, sacred moments in between. Nurses learn quickly that every life holds a story. And that most of those stories disappear if no one decides to keep them.

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​When my mother died after a long decline from dementia, something in me that had been waiting a long time finally had permission to begin.

I sat down and did not stop.

I wrote longhand first, pages and pages.

I wrote on planes, on vacation, at the beach and in hotel rooms in other countries.

I mapped timelines, drew lineages, traced a century and a half of women across continents.

I hired editors.

I built this website.

I became, in the truest sense of the word, possessed.

Seven generations of women had been waiting for someone to finally pay attention.

I was not going to be the one who looked away.

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That story became THE PENNY, a novel about seven generations of Italian-American women bound by blood, silence, and a secret that takes more than a century to name.​

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When I’m not writing, I’m working in healthcare, cooking from memory, and planning the next trip ideally one that ends near the ocean.

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Because the older I get, the more I believe stories behave like tides.

They leave.
They return.
And eventually someone has to listen.

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This will most certainly not be my last novel.

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