Welcome to Criss Creek, Illinois—where golden summer nights and blooming gardens set the stage for fresh starts. When Kat returns home after the collapse of her twenty-year marriage, she’s not the only one at a crossroads. Her best friend Jess is facing a reckoning of her own. Together, they create a summer bucket list to reclaim joy, purpose, and pieces of themselves they thought were lost.

But when Kat’s first love reappears and Jess uncovers a life-altering secret, both women must decide what they’re willing to risk for a second chance.

Summer in the Moon Garden is a heartwarming novel of friendship, reinvention, and the unexpected ways life can bloom again—no matter where you’ve been.

By Kristie Booker

Blooming Into Life

A Novel

From a bustling city life to a family farm rooted in tradition, Blooming Into Life follows one woman’s journey to rediscover herself—and the connections that matter most. Colleen Adler seems to have everything: a beautiful home, two young daughters, and a husband with a thriving career. But grief, disconnection, and a growing sense of emptiness threaten to unravel it all.

Back in rural Illinois, her mother Mary Ann is facing her own losses—and hoping it’s not too late to mend what’s broken between them. As summer brings them together on the century-old family farm, long-buried tensions surface, but so do healing, hope, and the quiet magic of starting over.

A heartfelt novel about mothers and daughters, second chances, and the strength it takes to bloom where you’re planted.