The Miles Between Us
by Laura Geraghty
In this upmarket Women’s Fiction story, Alice Whitaker and her husband, Tom, have spent six decades living by a single, unspoken rule: silence equals survival. But when a terminal diagnosis strips away Alice’s future, she refuses to keep her secrets buried any longer. Told in dual timelines, moving between their early years in mid-century California and a modern-day race for closure, Alice must find the courage to celebrate the life she was forced to hide before she loses her chance to say goodbye.
The Miles Between Us is about what happens when the road you choose is the one you’ve spent a lifetime avoiding—and how sometimes healing begins not by moving forward, but by having the courage to look back.
“And just like that, her family was rearranged, like furniture being moved around the room. She, always having been a daughter, was now a mother. Her parents were now recast as grandparents. The man who had only ever been her husband suddenly bore the title of father. In an instant, the labels they had worn until now were broken apart and remade. And it was all because of him, her tiny boy, who, after only existing for mere minutes, already had the power to change them all.”
— Laura Geraghty, The Miles Between Us
Where We Are Broken
by Laura Geraghty
Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM
Where We Are Broken follows ten-year-old Basil Kane over the span of five years against the backdrop of rural 1960s West Virginia. Born into poverty to a neglectful single mother struggling with addiction and her own demons, Basil lives a lonely, destitute life, wondering if there is something more for her out there. When an elderly Black woman named Miss Celia moves into her poor neighborhood known as the “hollers”, they are drawn together by longing: Miss Celia for the family she lost and Basil for the family she never had. Soon they develop an unlikely friendship that challenges their close-minded community during the heart of the civil rights movement.
Inspired by real Appalachian women who led the fight for social justice, Miss Celia shows Basil how to stand up for herself as she navigates a world determined to break her. Torn between loving and hating her mother, Basil is forced to make an impossible decision in order to have a chance at a better life. It is a heart-wrenching story that sheds light on what it felt like to live and breathe the crippling conditions of poverty and racism during the 1960s. Through extraordinary hardships and a life-altering discovery, Basil learns to fight for what she believes in, as well as the important lessons of love, loss, and the art of perseverance.
“They both hurt from loss, from being left behind. They both ached for a family they didn’t have. Maybe all it takes is to find someone who understands your loneliness. Then maybe through loss you discover there just might be something you gain.”
— Laura Geraghty, Where We Are Broken