Green Thoughtful Grasshopper

I grew up in Valhalla, New York—the town that rose where the village of Kensico once stood, a setting in my first novel. Local folklore claimed that when the reservoir receded, you could still see the steeple of the old Kensico Methodist Church. The idea that an entire immigrant town could vanish beneath the water, its stories largely forgotten, stayed with me even as I pursued a career as an investigator. As a first-generation Irish American, the echoes of those displaced lives resonated deeply. Last year, through The Book Incubator program led by author Mary Adkins, I finally brought this story to the page—one that has been living in my imagination for decades as I left my life in New York behind and recently moved to the south shore of Massachusetts. While keeping my day job, my writing continues beyond this novel, with future works exploring a secret society of women introduced briefly in this book, whose friendship endures across generations.