Novelist
Traveler
Storyteller
Elyse Garrett
Elyse’s Novels
CLEFT
Cleft is about two women, unknown to each other, who claim the same daughter.
Olga, in Russia, was forced to relinquish her baby, born with a cleft lip and palate, and is determined to find her.
Two years after Lauren’s husband and children were killed in southern California, she adopted a little girl with a cleft lip and palate from a Russian orphanage and vows to keep her safe.
Cleft is driven by the dual POV characters’ emotional journeys and includes cultural diversity, multi-generational families, the power of women’s friendships.
MAHT
Russian for “Mother”
1992 after the fall of the Soviet Union. An American woman, Lauren Quinn viewed a documentary filmed inside the crowded orphanages in the former Soviet Union. The adoption facilitator warned her of potential dangers and predicted an adoption to take a week to ten days before she could return home with her child. While flying over the Atlantic Ocean, Russia announced a moratorium on foreign adoptions. Lauren’s choices were to either wait in Russia for the moratorium to be cancelled or fly home. Lauren couldn’t imagine returning home and leaving the little girl, that she held in her heart, to continue enduring such horrific conditions for weeks, months, or possibly years. Lauren had to make a quick decision.
Paradise
On a December afternoon in Los Angeles Jenevieve awaited a letter from her long-time pen pal, Malia, in Honolulu. They had exchanged long letters since they were eight years old that often included whatever they could fit into the envelope, like a photo, picture post card, a recipe, or sometimes a stick of Juicy Fruit gum. Their most recent letters included photos of their eighteenth birthdays five weeks apart. Two days later, Jenevieve gathered in front of the radio with her family. The announcer’s somber voice drew gasps from everyone in the room. “Pearl Harbor has been attacked by the Japanese.”
“Paradise”
Elyse’s Short Stories
A Pilot’s Story
Andrea, a commercial pilot and a debut author struggles to meet her publisher's demand for a second book by the end of the year. She cant come up with a story idea and panics. She meets Evelyn, a New York Times Bestseller who offers Andrea her apartment while she is on a six month book tour in Europe. Evelyn insists that Andrea will find inspiration for a story while living in the building, like she did for each of her ten novels. How far would Andrea go to meet the deadline?
3rd & Oak, an Anthology ~ Published 2024
A Voice
A ten-year-old girl lives with a foster family in Huntington Beach. One afternoon she is kidnapped by the gardener and taken to a remote cabin. When her abductor passes out in a drunken stupor, she escapes. Due to the trauma she loses her voice. But her ingenuity and tenacity give her hope. Can she regain her voice?
Echo, an Anthology ~ Published 2023
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