Amanda Gibson
Born in Brooklyn and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb, Amanda holds a B.A. in English Literature from Florida State University, an M.A. in Education from the University of Great Falls, and an M.A. in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from the University of South Alabama. In March 2021, she published her debut novel, In the Absence of Serpents, a study of the human heart in isolation. She taught English Composition and British and American Literature at the University of South Alabama for over ten years before leaving academia to work as an advertising copywriter.
An avid cook and backyard birder, Amanda lives in midtown Mobile with her husband, two rambunctious children, a Border Collie, and a parrot. She is working on her second novel, which she aims to release in 2026.
To escape her former life and everyone in it, food writer Lorelai Erland relocates to a tiny, seemingly idyllic hamlet in the middle of the Rocky Mountains of northwestern Wyoming. There, she owns and operates a bookstore on Main Street, attempting to blend in and carry on a life of anonymity: a goal Lorelai soon finds is impossible to realize in the town of Langley. From the Elvis impersonator/illusionist to a woman who makes "spiritual house calls," Lorelai begins to notice the oddities her neighbors exhibit on a daily basis. Lorelai finds kinship in Edie Waters, the hard-partying, neurotic schoolteacher struggling with a dead-end relationship of her own, and Eric Southerland, the handsome but hardheaded lawyer, also new to the town. By hiring help in the bookstore, Lorelai also provides security and protection to sixteen-year-old Skye Byrd, who desperately yearns for a more stable home life free from the clutches of her violent brother. Throughout her struggle to fit into her new life, Lorelai influences those around her in immeasurable ways.
