Like jazz, stories are meant to be heard, to strike resonant chords in our hearts or rumble down deep in our gut. Soul music. Melodies and words about what matters. When we tell our stories and they are listened to, and when we listen to other people’s stories, we build community, come closer. We grow in understanding of ourselves and others, and hopefully become more curious, suspend old ideas and assumptions … Read more about why I write.

 “I am a bud beginning to unfold, a story waiting to be told.”                                                                       –Sam Keen

The Woman Inside Her is my novel-in-progress. 

As the story begins,

It’s San Francisco 50 years ago, in the wake of the Summer of Love, at the peak of the 60s Sexual Revolution, and on the cusp of the Women’s Liberation movement. America is at war and in turmoil.

In the midst of it all, a young Midwestern girl who dreams of a career singing jazz and pop music is trying to navigate her way to womanhood through an obstacle course of bad luck and bad choices, rampant misogyny, and cultural upheaval for which she isn’t at all prepared. The lessons learned are sometimes heart-breaking, but over time empowering. For Krista Hiatt, the journey to love is as raucous—and transformative—as the era she lives in.

Fascinating, too, are the striking parallels, and surprising differences, between then and now, making The Woman Inside Her a timely novel that speaks to many of the whys as well as remedies for some of today’s most troubling problems around sex, relationships and the treatment of women.

Read more about The Woman Inside Her—the story and characters, the setting and times–as well as a brief excerpt from Chapter One.