Michelle Bailat-Jones

I am absolutely delighted to be able to share some book news. My second novel, Unfurled, will be published this fall with Ig Publishing. I’m incredibly incredibly incredibly excited.

Ig does wonderful work and I’m thrilled to join their catalog. Check them out if you don’t already know them.

And for a little bit about the book…

Book blurbs and cover text are an impossible art – everything sounds like the description for a daytime TV drama. If you don’t believe me, test my theory: I just went and checked the back covers of three of my favorite understated, quiet novels and all of them sound like 19^th century advertisements for miracle remedies. So I won’t give you that text here – it will come in its own unavoidable time.

But I will tell you a little about the book…

I live in Switzerland now, but I grew up in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and (my heart is often still there and) Unfurled is set in a neighborhood that runs alongside and overlooks the Puget Sound, a beautiful place of mountains and ocean. The book is about a difficult woman – because I love writing them and because they are true. The book is about grief – because I cannot get away from this subject. It’s a mother-daughter book in a sneaky way because it’s pretending to be a father-daughter book. It’s a book about mental illness, about abandonment, about fear. It’s a book about the fine line between imagination and the more dangerous form of that gift, delusion. Finally, it’s a book about the daughter of a ferry pilot, about the ocean, about sailing and deep waters.

I look forward to sharing the book when it’s ready.

Unfurled by Michelle Bailat-Jones, Ig Publishing, Fall 2018.