Character-driven historical and contemporary fiction — the kind of book a circle of friends reads together and talks about long after the last page.
A novelist who spent thirty years as a counselor, Ceone Fenn writes the inner lives of ordinary people with rare tenderness and depth.
Katerina Danek trades her life in L'viv for an arranged marriage on the 1925 Saskatchewan prairie — and a respected husband whose private truth endangers her, and the stepson she's come to love.
★★★★★ 4.56 Goodreads
When her husband — a celebrated college coach — is arrested for crimes at his lakefront camp, Luella Laurent must weather a town's judgment, a family's fracture, and the long work of reclaiming a life worth living.
★★★★ 4.27 Goodreads
“Superbly written and spellbinding. Ceone Fenn has created a memorable character, showing us how to reclaim a life worth living.” Christine DeSmet · award-winning author & UW–Madison writing faculty
At the conclusion of a thirty-year counseling career, Ceone Fenn turned to writing. After winning the Wisconsin Writers' Association Jade Ring Award for both essay and adult fiction, she wrote To Reap the Finest Wheat, a novel of historical fiction, followed by It Happened at Whisper Lake. She lives in Minocqua, Wisconsin, with her husband, Robert.
Three decades of listening to people in their hardest seasons give her fiction its rare psychological depth — the quiet courage, resilience, and moral complexity of ordinary lives.
For Book Clubs Discussion questions written for the themes her counseling years made her fluent in — resilience, betrayal, the quiet negotiations of family. On-page or printable for your meeting.
