Some decisions can't be undone. Some silences do more damage than words. And some ordinary lives, quietly breaking apart, contain more courage than anyone around them will ever know.
In these thirteen stories, Sarah P. Blanchard takes readers into the interior lives of everyday people navigating hardship, love, betrayal, and the fragile hope that something better is still possible.
Story by story, Blanchard maps the fault lines where ordinary lives shift and crack and possibly, remarkably, hold.
Set against the landscapes of rural New England, the Carolina mountains, and the Hawaiian coast, Rift Zone moves between darkness and unexpected humor with the sure-footed control of a writer who trusts her characters-and her readers-completely.
Rift Zone will appeal to readers of Elizabeth Strout, Lucia Berlin, and Ron Rash, writers who find the universal in the deeply particular, and who believe that the quietest stories are often the most devastating. Sometimes, they are also the most beautiful.
Autorentext
Sarah P. Blanchard is a novelist, short story writer, and poet living in Putnam, Connecticut. She taught English and communications at the University of Hawaii-Hilo and creative writing at the University of North Carolina-Asheville. Her most recent novel, Grabtown, is a psychological thriller set in a small New England milltown. Released in October 2025, it landed in the top ten on Amazon for its genre and is a finalist for the CIBA Clue awards. Sarah's debut novel, Drawn from Life, also won several awards including a 2025 Independent Press Award for New Adult Fiction. Recognized as well for her short fiction, Sarah is a 2025 Pushcart Prize nominee for her story "Not a Burden." She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Connecticut and an M.B.A. from Nichols College in Webster, MA. Her short story collection, Rift Zone, was published in April 2026.