Moira Donovan
Writer | Novelist | Artist
Moira Donovan loves to let her imagination soar while managing to keep her feet solidly on this beautiful earth. If you don’t find her in her painting studio or at her writing desk, you will find her traipsing about along dirt paths up and down the hills surrounding her Southern California home.
Having lived between New York City, Los Angeles, and rural Vermont, Moira draws deeply from the physical landscapes and the emotions experienced in these places. Her debut novel, Crazy String, is rooted in the belief that even through fracture and grief, love remains a quiet but unstoppable force that connects us to one another.
Moira has an M.A. in English from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College and taught high school English Literature and Composition for over three decades. For the past 15 years, she has also written the weekly blog, NineCentGirl.com, in addition to publishing essays and articles in various newspapers and journals.
Crazy String
We curate our memories to survive, but the truth eventually forces its way back. Because some stories linger as dreamlike childhood memories, others are buried to be forgotten. But the past rarely stays hidden for long.
In Crazy String, David moves between the controlled clarity of his adult life and the haunting memories of a childhood marked by the “blue light night,” a moment that fractured everything his family once was. As past and present begin to blur, the version of the story he has lived by starts to crack open.
What remains is harder to face: the truth.
This book is a powerful exploration of grief, memory, and the quiet weight of unspoken secrets. Crazy String reveals how families hold together and come undone. At its heart, it is a story about forgiveness, and the realization that only truth has the power to unthread the knots pain has left behind.
Sneak Peek Inside the Novel
The night air hit his face like a hard slap as he drove the motorcycle at breakneck speed. Terror and adrenaline raced through his whole body as he watched the speedometer hit 90. Riding absolutely out of control, David leaned the bike to accelerate into the curve. His passenger let out a scream and wrapped her arms tighter around his waist, her hands digging through his black t-shirt as he maneuvered through the stretch of s-curves, one after the other, over and over like playing Grand Theft Auto on repeat. The woman clinging to him yells in his ear to slow down, to stop, to let her off. Ignoring her frantic pleas, he aimed his Yamaha 650 into the stand of tall pines that rose up ahead. “Stop, David! Stop! My children, my little ones! Stop! This is madness, please—”
The jolt from a ringing phone jarred David from his recurring nightmare of navigating the motorcycle straight into certain death. He wanted to stop before he crashed, if not for his own life, then for whoever rode behind him, but instead, he opened the throttle further. Another ring opened his eyes to the apartment ceiling. He reached across the form of his fiancé, Isabella, nestled under the comforter, and managed to place the receiver to his ear but was unable to utter a greeting.
“David? David, are you there?” It took a minute for David to place the voice he heard as his sister’s. He watched the digital clock flash from 5:29 to 5:30.
“Wake up, David. I need you. Pops is talking to her, actually talking to Momma.” Beatrice’s panic was so tangible it momentarily halted her. “David?” he heard his name echoing through sleepiness.
Moira Donovan
Author of contemporary literary fiction and suspenseful storytelling.
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