JILL KELLY
Jill Kelly is a writer, visual artist, creativity coach, and freelance editor. A longtime college professor of literature, she has been writing and publishing since 2002. Her memoir, Sober Truths: The Making of an Honest Woman, was a finalist for the prestigious Oregon Book Award. She lives in Portland, Oregon. You can learn more about Jill at jillkellyauthor.com.
WHEN YOUR MOTHER DOESN'T
Skyhorse, 2015
A Revealing and Intimate Story of What a Mother Will—and Will Not—Do for Her Daughters
What kind of women do daughters become when their fathers are missing and their mothers can’t love them? How do they find love and ways to love themselves?
Nearly three decades of secrets lie between Lola Ashby and the two girls she reluctantly raised. Now, prompted by the one father figure she respects, older daughter Frankie agrees to drive from Portland to visit her ailing mother, who abandoned the girls when they were in high school. When younger daughter Callie announces to Frankie that she’s moving her fashion model career to Los Angeles from the East Coast, Frankie badgers her sister into meeting up in the Idaho panhandle for a family reunion to dilute the impact of their mother’s indifference.
However, on Frankie’s first night on the road, the trip gets more complicated when a well-dressed elderly woman at a rest stop dumps a young boy in her lap with a request to take him on to Montana. And Callie’s exit from Pittsburgh is fraught with its own shady and violent difficulties. Meanwhile, Lola strengthens her resolve to keep the past and its secrets where they belong.
“Deeply moving and profoundly suspenseful, When Your Mother Doesn’t is the unforgettable story of two sisters navigating their way through loss and grief in search of love, and what it means to be a family. A very fine novel from an engaging voice.” —Carla Buckley, author of The Deepest Secret
“I devoured When Your Mother Doesn’t in greedy gulps, fully steeped in this gripping story of three broken women who understand each other so little, yet are bonded by so much. Beautifully written and unflinching, this book is a gem.” —Kristina Riggle, author of Real Life & Liars
FOG OF DEAD SOULS
Skyhorse, 2014
When college professor Ellie McKay walks into the Maverick Bar in Farmington, New Mexico, late one evening, she plans to get drunk, not engaged. But within thirty minutes, she’s met cowboy Al Robison, he’s proposed to her, and she’s accepted. Al only knows that Ellie is attractive, vulnerable, and single; he doesn’t know that she has been on the run for weeks from a sociopath who killed her surgeon boyfriend in Pennsylvania and raped and tortured her. Reeling from the ordeal and deeply scarred emotionally and physically, Ellie flees first to Paris, where she seeks refuge in the bottle. Then, coming to her senses, she returns to Pittsburgh to resume her life and her career, believing she will be safe there. When that proves untrue, she takes to the road, no longer caring much what happens to her. Ellie’s escape route leads her to Santa Fe and then north to Farmington where Al seems the safest best. When she says yes to Al’s proposals, she knows only that he is a local rancher. She doesn’t know about Al’s own dark past, and she doesn’t tell him that her heart belongs to Doug Hansen, the detective who originally investigated the case.
A twisting, suspenseful, and heartfelt book about real people facing the darkest and cruelest of mysteries…When you tear through the final agonizing pages, you’ll know you’ve been in the hands of a great storyteller, someone whose work reminds me a lot of Dean Koontz. Jill Kelly is the real deal and this is a riveting read. — David Bell, author of Never Come Back
A chameleon of a novel, this meticulously planned thriller evolves into a spiritual quest and kept me guessing with every page turn. — Ruth Dugdall, award-winning author of The Woman Before Me
Fog of Dead Souls is a layered thriller, rich with atmosphere, and with no shortage of mystery and police procedure. Deftly weaving together past and present, Jill Kelly creates a convincing portrait of a protagonist damaged yet unbroken by a terrible crime, a woman determined to move on with her life after unspeakable tragedy. If you’re looking for a serial killer story with characters detailed and authentic enough to step right off the page, this one’s for you. — James Hankins, author of Brothers and Bones and Jack of Spades.