I used AI to help me visualize Kat as I see her in my mind—standing in a moon garden, her genuine smile revealing the vibrant spirit beneath her composed exterior. While the technology gets closer every day, remember this is just one interpretation of our fictional heroine!

Have you ever stood in your own doorway, physically blocking someone from entering your home while your husband tries to push past you? Meet Kat. She has.

I’ve lived with Kat in my head for two years, and something about her journey from silent accommodation to determined self-discovery continues to inspire me. I hope she’ll inspire you too.

The Moment Everything Changed

Picture this: Kat spent the afternoon making a gorgeous dinner. Candles on the table, good china—the works. She’s wearing that blue dress that makes her legs look like they go on forever.

What readers will discover: This dinner isn’t just any dinner. It’s carefully orchestrated because Kat is finally ready to announce her acceptance into the CPS Teacher Residency Program and suggest marriage counseling (she’s even tucked a pamphlet inside her cookbook).

Then the doorbell rings. It’s a real estate agent with a portfolio and that too-bright professional smile. “I’m scheduled to meet with Richard for a home evaluation?” As her husband pulls into the driveway wearing a suit she’s never seen before, everything crystallizes for Kat. Some betrayals are quiet. But they cut just as deep.

Her Secret Path Back to Teaching

During her twin sons’ senior year, Kat began quietly reclaiming her teaching career – without telling Richard:

• She logged into the Educator Licensure Information System, paid a penalty fee, and discovered she’d accumulated the required hours of professional development from free sessions she’d been attending for years
• She paid all outstanding registration fees
• After missing the application deadline for the Teacher Residency Program the previous spring, she persisted and reapplied the following winter
• She attended the interview right before her sons returned home from college, learning that afternoon she’d been accepted

The interview that led to her acceptance is what makes that dinner scene so poignant. Just as she’s prepared to share her triumph and suggest working on their marriage, Richard brings a stranger into their home to evaluate it for sale. He tosses out the idea of moving to Florida to “reconnect”—as if selling the home where they raised their children is just a simple suggestion. The home Kat has zero interest in leaving, especially now that she’s been accepted into the teaching program that will root her even more firmly in Chicago.

What Makes Her Tick

Here’s the thing about Kat that I love most—she’s spent twenty years building a life around other people, but there’s still this fierce, uncompromising core beneath all those layers of accommodation.

She craves autonomy, which drives her back to teaching after 19 years away. And she desperately needs genuine connection—the kind she has with her twin sons Jack and Charlie, her sister Lainey, and her childhood friend Jess. The kind that’s vanished from her marriage.

Between the woman who once dreamed of teaching and the mother who preserved every scrap of her children’s artwork, Kat is caught in a powerful transition—rediscovering the thread that connects her past to her future, even as Richard tries to uproot everything she holds dear.

What’s Ahead for Kat

There’s a moment when Kat holds her wedding ring in her palm, feeling its weight before putting it down for the final time. That single action changed everything.

I think about Kat’s mom’s moon garden a lot—the one her father built, filled with white flowers that bloom at night. “The most beautiful things often reveal themselves in darkness,” right? That’s Kat’s journey. From feeling exposed with a bare ring finger to discovering the freedom it represents.

She’s navigating a messy divorce, financial manipulation, and trying to reconcile her feelings for Danny, knowing that rushing into anything would only complicate their lives further.

I can’t wait for you to get to know her—this woman who’s discovering that sometimes the bravest thing you can do is let go of the life you planned and embrace the one that’s waiting for you.

Summer in the Moon Garden will be available in July. Sign up to be an Arc Reader to read the novel before anyone else here.