LORINMICHEL
author
818.414.9875
THE YEAR OF KAT, a novel
What happens when backing out of your driveway, late for work, and the phone rings? If you’re Kat, you answer it. But when she does, she sets in motion a catastrophic accident that pushes her into a year-long journey to discover meaning in tragedy.
Kat has it all. A successful career and a precocious daughter, Emma, who she adores. She lives her life according to rules and general order. But when Emma dies, Kat’s understanding of what makes her world function dies, too. As she spirals deep into despair, she is unable and unwilling to face the truth about her involvement in Emma’s death, and so she runs away to seek a life where no one knows her secret.
Ezekiel Raines, a dark and enigmatic stranger living among the Navajo people in a nameless New Mexico town, finds Kat wandering aimlessly in the high desert and she becomes his mission to find his own redemption. A rainmaker with mysterious powers, Eze, as he is known, has his own demons he has yet to confront.
Together, Kat and Eze attempt to navigate the challenges confronting them while also navigating the extreme seasonal shifts of the desert. It will take the near tragedy of another child, a young Navajo girl called Sky Dancing Willow, to help them both find a way forward, through their grief, and toward the future.
The Year of Kat, a literary fiction novel, embraces the mystical nature of the desert and the Native Americans who claim it as their own. The novel dives deep into the profound grief and self-destructive habits that follow the death of a child while exploring the possibility of healing and forgiveness. There is magic in the harsh seasons of the land and there is mystery in the teachings of the people, the Diné.
This novel, at just over 79,000 words, was written during my time in the Stanford Continuing Studies master’s level Online Writing Certificate program. Over the years, I’ve written several short stories and have won flash fiction contests. My work was also published by the Los Angeles Times as part of their Birds of Paradise collaborative novel. I currently spend every day writing about people’s lives, their personal demons, diving headlong into the magic and mystery present in each of us.