THANKSGIVING THISTLES

Ten years after lies spread online tore her family apart, Mara has learned how to live without going home. Then her mother calls and invites her to Thanksgiving.

Three nights. That’s all Mara has to survive.

So she packs a suitcase, grabs her cane, and drives back to the Smoky Mountains—to the house she grew up in, the brother and sister who stopped calling, and parents who know far less about the last decade than they think they do.

The familiar things are still there: Mama’s stuffing, ruthless Monopoly games, black olives on fingertips, old stories that never get told the same way twice. So are the wounds everyone has learned not to touch.

As Thanksgiving unfolds, the past begins pressing against the present, forcing Mara to face what really happened, the man who twisted the truth, and the family who believed enough of it to let her go.

Funny, tender, and sharp-edged, Thanksgiving Thistles is a story about the damage of accusation, the stubbornness of love, and what happens when a woman returns home to find out whether family roots can survive ten years of silence.

When everyone has their own version of the past, who gets to decide what the truth is?

Work in Progress