The Jilliad

Description

Starting over can be epic.

Awarded Capella University’s Faculty Marketing Specialization Grant, The Jilliad is a novel about personal loss and creative rediscovery. Shortly before her 40th birthday, suburban wife, mom, and former aspiring artist Jillian Kensington finds herself suddenly alone, holding the shattered fragments of a life she’s worked hard to convince herself was perfect.

Rescued by her estranged best friend from childhood, Jillian returns to the small mountain town where she grew up. There she is forced to confront the dark underworld of her marriage and the ways in which she long ago abandoned what matters most. When further help arrives in the form of an unlikely cast including her first love from high school, a bitter Desert Storm veteran, and a free-spirited pygmy goat, Jillian is faced with a choice that will change all of their lives: Remain in a fever dream of denial or wake up and allow herself—and her life—to be transformed.

Loosely inspired by the writings of Homer and other ancient Greek storytellers, The Jilliad is a novel about the choices we make, the consequences of those choices, and—if we’re lucky—the chance we get to create something authentic and new from the broken pieces of our former selves.