The Dancer

Gold Medal Award Winning Story, Reader's Favorite 2020

For Veronica, her midlife crisis feels as if she’s trapped in a deflating balloon. She’s separated, works full time, has teenage sons whose moods fluctuate like the tides and, her mother, Margo, has early onset Alzheimer’s and, unbeknown to Veronica, she's keeping a secret.

Veronica visits her mother twice a week at the care home where she resides, bringing in the costumes she wore as a young dancer when her future was bright and full of romance. As she talks about the past, she transports them back to that place in time before everything changed and she lost the love of her life.

But with Margo’s memory disappearing has Veronica left it too late to tell her the part of her story they never talked about? If she has, then how can she ever heal from the events that derailed her life twenty-six years ago? And will Margo’s lie shatter what Veronica’s held on to as the truth for so many years.

On the Isle of Wight, Isabel’s the girl with mermaid hair who'd lost her way until she found a place to call home on the island. She holds the key to giving Veronica’s story a happy ending. But will the stars align and give her the strength she needs to reach out and find the part of her that’s missing? And in doing so, will she hurt those she cares most about?