by Babette Fraser Hale
Women’s Fiction / Texas Fiction
Publisher: Winedale Publishing
Publication Date: October 15, 2026
SYNOPSIS
Ten women fall for Cole Burnett, a traveling Texas writer. He is the kind of man whose need for freedom should send lovers running in the opposite direction. But he has a lanky charisma and the gift of listening, rare enough at any time. The women he encounters in Narcissi, a novel-in-stories, find his attention compelling, and they all get hurt, or cause hurt. But hurt is never the whole story.
Each woman brings her own complicated life into her time with Cole, conflicts with husbands, traumas survived, needs postponed, children. And children grow up with questions.
Burnett understands that loneliness compels him toward the women he meets. But none of them seems to reach where the loneliness resides, where whatever’s missing pushes him to keep moving, to find a purpose for his future. Later, after the death threat, traveling becomes a way to stay alive.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Babette Hale is the author of A Wall of Bright Dead Feathers, winner of the 2022 Troncoso Award for debut fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters, and a memoir, This Familiar Heart, about her relationship with her late husband, Leon Hale. In addition to writing fiction, she has been a magazine feature writer, columnist, book editor, publisher and part owner of a bookstore. She lives in Texas and is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.
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