Award Name Christy Awards Award category First Novel Description Strong, resilient, and deeply loyal, Dottie Connell farms her family\'s three hundred acres in rural Ohio alone, having sacrificed love and family for land she does not own.
This is her first novel; it was originally selected by Leif Enger, author of Peace Like a River, as a finalist for the Paraclete Press Fiction Award..
She teaches creative writing at Wheaton College and lives with her husband in Illinois. "Like the land she inhabits and the people she attends, Nicole Mazzarella offers a subtle and enduring beauty, born of intense interiority, and vision both broad and deep." -Scott Cairns, author of Philokalia: New & Selected Poems About the Author Nicole Mazzarella grew up in Ohio and writes with sensitivity and precision about rural, Midwestern life.
Evoking the hardship, spring-fed beauty, and the complexities of community in the rural Midwest, This award-winning, beautifully observed novel leads us to question our ideas about motherhood, faith, and the debts we owe.
Spanning a decade, This Heavy Silence explores the power of the vows we make to others, and, more binding, those we make to ourselves.
Pressured by her community to allow her former fianc to raise the child, Dottie must face the past she has worked fifteen years to forget.
A sudden, inexplicable event leaves the daughter of her childhood friend in her care.
Award Name Christy Awards Award category First Novel Description Strong, resilient, and deeply loyal, Dottie Connell farms her family\'s three hundred acres in rural Ohio alone, having sacrificed love and family for land she does not own
