Sally is a novelist, essayist, artist, and scientist with a BA in English and an MS in conservation biology. Before following the path to novel writing and conservation work, she worked in technical editing and philanthropic fundraising. As a conservation scientist, Sally works with nonprofit organizations to help preserve biodiversity and help wildlife adapt to climate change.

Set in distinctly New England settings, Sally’s fiction combines literary, contemporary, suspense, thriller, and romance elements.

In HALT AT X, Lucinda Tyne Beck, uber fundraiser, faces much more than money woes when new President Frank Wickes takes over at Peabody-Hawthorne College on the North Shore of Massachusetts. Lucinda uncovers illegal use of donations by her boss at the same time her 17-year marriage to artsy photographer Bart Beck unravels at a betrayal Lucinda can’t deny. Soon Lucinda is scrambling to save the college’s reputation and her marriage. Right after her husband moves out, Lucinda’s best friend arrives at her farmhouse, horse trailer in tow, with an ex-racehorse on the verge of starvation. When her life is threatened and Bart self-destructs, Lucinda turns to a surprising ally and an intrepid dwarf miniature horse for help. Before he pursuer strikes, can Lucinda save her college, her Thoroughbred mare, and find a new way to love?

 YELLOW SKY, EMERALD SEA revists the Hurrciane of 1938 in Rhode Island in its 80th anniversary year.

In the afternoon of September 21, 1938, a deadly hurricane bludgeons New England’s south coast with no warning. On a sandy point straddling Rhode Island and Connecticut, all the summer houses–with their owners clinging to roofs–blow into the bay. The next day, an aspiring reporter picks up a pen to interview his surviving neighbors. Will their memories survive?

Readers whose tastes run to Alexander McCall Smith, Rita Mae Brown, and Anne Tyler will enjoy this feel-good contemporary story honoring the survivors of the Hurricane of 1938 in Rhode Island. In this literary, yet fast-paced tale laced with intrigue, corruption, and romance, protagonist Vieve Clough Beale, portrait artist, recovery alcoholic, and widow with storm wreckage of a different, arrives on the Weekapaug Coast in the run-up to the 80th anniversary of the hurricane to visit her beloved Uncle Carl, retired jewelry magnate. When he doesn’t show for dinner, Vieve–accompanied by her feisty terrier mix, Jack West–stay on to search for  him. As the search drags on, Vieve accpets an invitation from charismatic acrylic artist Marley Kinnell to compete together in a mural competition for the hurricane’s 80th anniversary commemoration. And then Vieve’s beloved terrior goes missing

What Vieve finds as she delves into preparations for the commemoration and the increasingly threatening activities at an abandoned coastal fort tests her loyalties and upends her future just as the town faces its own memories of hell and grace.

The contemporary story, threaded with powerful hurricane-day vignetts of death and survival, is a resonant tale of love, ambition, loss, and the rich legacy of time and memory.

*****

Sally’s essays–on bluebird nest monitoring, learning to play the saxophone, and making sense of a mismatched creche–have been published in the Christian Science Monitor.

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