Ruby Moyer's Pineapple Upside-Down Life

Coming from Pretzel City Press in 2025!

It’s 1950, and Ruby Moyer has just graduated high school. She’s got a recipe for her life, and it begins with putting her parents’ broken marriage back together and going to college so she can get a job in Betty Crocker’s test kitchens. But she’s got no money. Worse, she doesn’t know where her mother is. Fueled by dreams of family reconciliation and a glamorous career, she abandons her backwater Pennsylvania Dutch town on the trail of her missing mother, squirreling away money for her college fund as she goes.  

Ruby makes friends with sassy, irresponsible Vesper, who joins her on her journey. They make their way to South Philadelphia, where Ruby starts to make a name for herself as a cook in a family restaurant. But when Vesper lands herself in trouble, Ruby must decide whether to save her new friend or to follow her own dreams. 

A helping of foods both familiar and new, a dash of gossipy, self-righteous neighbors, and a splash of adventure await Ruby as she cooks up her new life.


The Pelican's Blood

Even as devout, fifteen-year-old Urraca dreams of a future with the young knight Diego, her father, the king of Portugal, arranges her marriage to Fernando, the king of Galicia and León. Urraca is thrown into the high-stakes scandals of court life. Blamed for her failure to conceive, her marriage and her place at court begin to crumble amid the hostile politics of a land divided by Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Even the long-awaited birth of a legitimate heir cannot protect her from the enemies who dog her every step. Urraca realizes that her greatest challenge will be keeping her son alive long enough to claim his place on the throne. With her dowry gone to finance her husband’s lust for empire and the whole court turned against her, Urraca is forced to make a choice: retreat to the safety of a convent or risk her life—and her eternal soul—to spirit her young son away from his would-be murderers.

Read “For Unto Us”, an excerpt of The Pelican's Blood in the Winter 2016 edition of The Copperfield Review.

Currently seeking representation.