This evocative collection of linked stories explores the hope, heartache, and messiness of love and life, revealing how, in the deepest corners of our beings, we long for healing.

Patricia invokes the presence of her deceased grandmother in a reverie and they reminisce while waiting for a resistant story to emerge. While she navigates the treacherous terrains of family sewing traditions and Spain’s gruelling cross-country pilgrims’ trail, unexpected truths are found in the depths of transformation. A woman’s quest for the perfect cinnamon bun becomes a metaphor for living without regret. Lessons passed from mother to daughter hinge on choosing the perfect coat. But when a crisis inspires the wrong purchase, a mysterious appearance delivers redemption. Through dance comes reckoning-with yearning for fatherly love, with confronting her own raw sexuality, and by accepting the harsh truths of aging. An old flame ignites an obsession and a gutsy reflection yields a potentially life-changing insight. Reaching a tipping point of overwhelm and panic spurs the exploration of harrowing episodes, and wholeness is found in a powerful naming. After a decade of maintaining a rambling heritage home on her own, Patricia feels bitterness rise in herself and slips away from her annual Christmas party. Faced with their father’s impending death, she and her sister, Joann, sense the arrival of their mother from her heavenly abode, which allows them to be together as a family once more.

With intelligent, clear-eyed prose, these stories reach into the heart of what it means to be a woman fully alive to her inner and outer worlds. Lyrical, sensuous, and unflinching, Under the Covers: A Life of Gumption, Passion, Gifts, and Secrets is a poignant, entertaining testimony to a life lived authentically.