Ten Small Beds

At forty-five, clinical psychologist Davida Grayson, leaves a thriving practice in Oakland, California to return to her childhood home in Still Water, Kansas after the death of her reclusive father. Her mother is in a nursing home, suffering from Alzheimer's disease. In the ensuing months, unsettling events threaten Davida’s safety, sobriety, and sanity. Foremost among these is the reappearance of her high school sweetheart, Paul, who had traumatized Davida as a teenager by playing an inexplicably cruel practical joke. Events suggest that he may be stalking her, but she is starting to question her own perceptions. Despite increasing self-doubt, she continues to work, via long distance phone calls, with three of her Oakland therapy clients: a Korean college student whose burden of responsibility toward his immigrant parents has led him to attempt suicide; a stoic, workaholic man anguished by being his family’s scapegoat; and a woman coping with the family havoc wreaked by her husband’s bipolar illness. Interwoven with the main plot of the novel, their stories resonate with Davida’s struggle against mental deterioration and her quest to solve the central mystery of her life.