Jessica Harmon Has Stepped Away

2025 Sarton Book Award finalist for Contemporary Fiction

Jessica Harmon has spent her life in an emotional tug-of-war-yearning for her mother's attention while bracing for the rejection that always followed.

At thirty, Jessica's love life is a wreck, her confidence is shot, and she's adrift in New York City, stuck editing other people's novels at a vanity press while too paralyzed to write her own. She blames her failure to launch on the woman who raised her: Cynthia Harmon, a legendary poet and scholar, who dazzles her students and readers alike...but leaves her only child cold.

When Cynthia wins yet another major literary award and asks her daughter to assist her on the book tour, Jessica decides to give their relationship one last chance. When a crisis upends Cynthia's triumphant moment, the power dynamic begins to shift between the two women, and cracks start to show in the story Jessica has always been told-about her mother, her family, and herself.

Jessica Harmon Has Stepped Away is a sharp, emotionally layered novel about mothers and daughters, long-held secrets, and understanding where we come from so we can choose who we become.