Winner in Fiction: Novella from Best Book Awards too!

“…Diane Wald’s meditative literary novel Gillyflower is an experiment in restraint….. a delicate character study in which a single shared look impacts several lives—a psychological drama with an otherworldly atmosphere. Its introspective passages, images and omens, and subtle characterizations suit this work, and the finale is subdued and potent.” Foreword Reviews

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And ALSO: WINNER in Paranormal Romance from INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARDS!

And ALSO: WINNER in Fiction: Novella from INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARDS!

About Gillyflower

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Boston, 1984. Even in a world without cell phones, messages come through loud and clear if one is listening. When thirty-something Nora Forrest traveled to Manhattan to see a Broadway play starring her idol, an aging Irish actor named Hugh Sheenan, she doesn't know whether what happened in the theater that night should be credited to witchcraft, extrasensory perception, synchronicity, or simple accident—and she knows that many people would have told her nothing had happened at all.
Revealed through the voices of just four people, Gillyflower is a story about intersections and connections—real, imaginary, seized, and eluded. It’s a book about everyday magic, crystalline memory, and the details that flow through time and space like an electrified mist. Gillyflower is a detective story, a love story, and a coming-of-age story—for the never really young and for the almost old. 

About the Author

Diane Wald was born in Paterson, New Jersey, and has lived in Massachusetts since 1972. She holds a BA from Montclair State University and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has published more than 250 poems in literary magazines since 1966. She was the recipient of a two-year fellowship in poetry from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and has been awarded the Grolier Poetry Prize, The Denny Award, The Open Voice Award, and the Anne Halley Award. She also received a grant  from the Artists Foundation (Massachusetts Council on the Arts). She has published four chapbooks (Target of Roses from Grande Ronde Press, My Hat That Was Dreaming from White Fields Press, Doublle Mirror from Runaway Spoon Press, and Faustinetta, Gegenschein, Trapunto from Cervena Barva Press, and won the Green Lake Chapbook Award from Owl Creek Press. Her electronic chapbook (Improvisations on Titles of Works by Jean Dubuffet) appears on the Mudlark website. Her book Lucid Suitcase was published by Red Hen Press in 1999 and her second book, The Yellow Hotel, was published by Verse Press in the fall of 2002. WONDERBENDER, her third collection, was published by 1913 Press in 2011. She lives outside of Boston with her husband, Carey Reid, and their charismatic cats.

An advanced-copy reader's comment

"Gillyflower is flawlessly crafted by a woman whose first novel has, I think, broken new ground. Some might call it a romance, others a mystery. No matter. I was hooked by the first page. The suspense builds and continues to the end. The characters are magnificently portrayed as they come to terms with the tension between the real and imagined. I highly recommend you see what all the buzz is about. "

 

Critical Praise for Gillyflower

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“Diane Wald is a magician. This wondrous novel about dreams that come true is by turns charming and alarming and utterly disarming. Brace yourself. You are about to witness a breathtaking sleight of heart.”
—Michael Downing, best-selling author of Perfect Agreement and Breakfast with Scot

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“In lush language, at an unhurried pace, Diane Wald beautifully observes the prelude and progression of a mysterious love begun in a shared dream.”
—Ellen Wittlinger, author of Hard Love, a Lambda Literary Award prize winner and Printz Honor Book, and many other novels

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“In Diane Wald’s lyrical and deeply compelling novel, she expertly explores the mystic telepathy exchanged between two strangers. In this insightful and finely tuned story, Wald expresses the inexpressible role played by clairvoyance, imagination, delusion, and self-fulfilling prophecy in our lives. Like the story’s bemused protagonist, you’ll finish this riveting story by concluding that you ‘never did get past the wonder of it!’”
—Charles Creekmore, author of Back to Walden: How Thoreau Can Change Your Life Today

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"What sets this quixotic love story apart from other tales of obsession is the sly way it reveals not only the intrigues of the lovers’ relationship but also the mysteries of the relationships that surround them. Gillyflower’s beauty lies in showing us that even the rarest, most obscure love never grows in isolation; it exists, like all of us, in connection to other living things."
—Jennifer Tseng, award-winning author of The Passion of Woo and Isolde and Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness

An excerpt from Gillyflower​

"The pain is essentially gone, but the mystery remains. I went through all the proper stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—sometimes one by one, sometimes simultaneously, but I never did get past the wonder of it. A death would have been easier to endure. For my situation—ours—there exists no comforting ritual, no consolation from relatives or friends, no body of literature that could interpret or advise. The one person with whom I might have shared my loss was the one person whom I could never contact—oh, he was alive, and reachable had I attempted to reach him, but that was unthinkable. Somewhere in the world he was struggling just as I was, in his own (and, I was quite sure, better) way. I have wonderful memories, it’s true; I will always have them. But try as I might to focus on their sweetness, any sweetness always seems to lie, tantalizingly, at center-bottom of a clear, but immeasurably deep, pool of bewilderment."
Check out these mentions of Gillyflower:

Debut novels everyone will will be reading:
https://parade.com/729177/ashley_johnson/debut-novels-everyone-will-be-reading-in-2019/

Best travel books:
https://www.bookbub.com/blog/best-travel-books-editorial-blurbs

The Author Stories Podcast (interview)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5AnEUMZc-Q
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3 New Books about Shifting Relationship Dynamics​
https://www.brit.co/new-books-shifting-relationship-dynamics/

The Pale-Blue Gloves
(You'll find out what they mean when you read Gillyflower.)