The Lives We Bury, a novel  

THE LIVES WE BURY is a love story between two people who never would have met if their partners hadn’t died in the same tragedy. 

Told from the perspective of both in alternating chapters, Cora and Justin meet while waiting at the scene of a D.C. metro crash that kills 12 people, including Cora’s husband and Justin’s girlfriend. In a year of grief and healing, they dig into the mysteries of the tragedy, take a road trip through two family sagas, and navigate a love no one understands but them.

However, grief pulls them in different directions: Cora’s quest takes her to a crash survivor in the slums of Baltimore and a collaborative project that sets their world on fire, and Justin’s past leads him to his estranged mother on the shores of Lake Michigan. When old demons and new dangers surface, Justin wants to find a way back normal life with Cora, and she must choose between two men—one dead and she's still grieving him, and one alive, but that would mean moving on from her marriage.

THE LIVES WE BURY is inspired loosely on my experience with losing my uncle, a World Champion Aerobatic Pilot, who fatally crashed while landing in front of thousands of people at an airshow. The definitive cause of the accident was never determined, and I wanted to explore in fiction how we grapple when closure is elusive and sudden loss violently delineates our personal narratives between the then and the now .