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What Was Lost

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Novel coming on October 8, 2024
Published by She Writes Press

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Description

When a girl feels complicit in her own abuse, how does that thwart the adult woman?

Welling to the surface are memories of a past Marti Farrell tried to bury. The catalyst is her teenage daughter, Tess, whose awakening sexuality is causing Marti an acute unease.

Marti makes an impulsive decision to return to the small Vermont town she ran away from thirty years earlier, an unwitting and unwilling Tess towed along for the journey, further escalating tension between them.

Seeking both forgiveness for lies told, and revenge for secrets held, Marti has a plan. But it all goes awry as she learns the full impact her deception has had on other people’s lives. There’s no more burying the past: Marti has to confront it to release its clutches.

What Was Lost shifts from the 1960’s to 2000 exploring the myriad ways people felt “othered”, and a young girl’s limited options in times before language such as “me, too” helped give voice to these all-too-common occurrences.

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Biography

Melissa Connelly dropped out of high school at age fifteen. Despite this, she went on to receive a BSN in nursing, an MA in special education, and an MFA in creative writing. She’s had a long career working with children in a range of different roles in schools, hospitals, psychiatric clinics and daycares.

Publications include American Heritage Magazine and the anthology, It’s All About Shoes, by Plain View Press. In 2019 she was a finalist for the Montana Prize. Her flash fiction, Go Go Girl, published by Ruminations magazine, was nominated for “Best Small Fictions Anthology” for 2022.

After a lifetime of writing, her first novel, What Was Lost is being published in October 2024 by She Writes Press.

She has a home in the mountains of Western North Carolina but lives most of the year in Brooklyn, New York.

Contact

MelissaConnellyWriter@gmail.com

Contact Publicist for Event Bookings:

Marissa DeCuir
Books Forward
marissa@booksforward.com

Reviews & Testimonials

“Multi-layered mysteries unfold with taut precision and suspense as Connelly walks a tightrope between past and present, coercion and consent, redemption and revenge. What Was Lost is a provocative spin on a classic theme—the seductive power of a charismatic mentor. Told with deft characterizations, a shrewd eye for detail and emotional complexity, no one is let off the hook—-not even the heroine—in this uncompromising novel.”

Chirlane McCray
Former first lady of New York City, and Writer

“In her searing debut novel, What Was Lost, Melissa Connelly deftly straddles two timelines in the life of a woman who was abused in her childhood, showing us the long shadow of sexual violence, and what it takes to confront the past in an effort to heal family dynamics. I couldn’t put it down.”

Emily Raboteau
Author of novels: Lessons for Survival, Searching for Zion,
the Professor’s Daughter

“Stunningly written, unerringly human, and deeply felt, Melissa Connelly’s What Was Lost is everything I yearn for in a novel, a story about people that I love in all of their flawed messiness, trying to make sense of and move through the murk and ache of their pasts, to discover and assert who and what else they might be.”

Lynn Steger Strong
Author of novels: Flight, Want, and Hold Still

Other Writings

Through The Front Door

American Heritage Magazine
April/May 2007
Volume 58, Issue 2

Go-Go Girl

Ruminate Magazine
November 2, 2021

Keyword Index

Coming of Age • Adolescence • Childhood Trauma • Sexual Abuse • Me, Too • Unwanted Pregnancy • Abortion • Homosexuality • Family • Mother-Daughter Relationships • Single Parent • Creativity