The Miles Between Us
by Laura Geraghty
Two weeks before Alice Whitaker’s sixtieth wedding anniversary, she receives a stage-three cancer diagnosis, forcing her to confront the past she’s spent a lifetime avoiding. She persuades her unsuspecting husband, Tom, to take a spontaneous cross-country road trip disguised as an anniversary gift. He would never agree to go if he knew the truth. Beneath the surface of their long life together lies a secret they have carried for decades that has slowly torn them apart, and Alice is now steering them back into the heart of the wreckage to make things right before her time is up. Told in dual timelines, The Miles Between Us traces the early years of their marriage alongside their present-day journey, slowly uncovering a past marked by tragedy, family secrets, and the fragile resilience of love.
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.
“Maybe quiet acts of love are right in front of us, but we just need to learn how to see them and have the courage to let them in.”
— 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