Goldenseal

Written by Maria Hummel

Narrated by Hillary Huber

Downtown Los Angeles, 1990. Alone in her luxury hotel suite, the reclusive Lacey Crane receives a message: Edith is waiting for her in the lobby. Former best friends, Lacey and Edith haven't spoken to one another in over four decades.

As young adults meeting at summer camp in Maine, and later making their way in the glitzy spotlight of postwar Hollywood, Edith and Lacey share a deep-rooted bond that once saved them from isolation and despair, providing comfort from the public and private traumas that they had each endured and which a newly optimistic world was eager to forget. Told through a continuous, twisting conversation that unfolds over the course of a single evening, in which each woman tells her story and reveals long-hidden secrets, the narratives of Edith and Lacey burn with atmosphere, mystery, resentment, and regret.

Set against the vivid landscapes of Los Angeles and unfolding with the evanescence of a dream or a memory, Goldenseal peels away the layers of an intimate female friendship to reveal a stirring and haunting story about the search for connection and the lingering echoes of lost love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: Jan 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9781696614306

Maria Hummel

Maria Hummel is an award-winning poet who has written for The Georgia Review, Green Mountains Review, and other publications. She is also the author of Wilderness Run, House and Fire and Motherland. She received her M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she studied under a Randall Jarrell Fellowship. She is a native of Vermont and lives with her husband in Los Angeles, California.