In Neva’s novel, Against the Wall–
After a failed suicide attempt, Elise escapes her life as a pastor’s wife by moving to the Victorian village of Ferndale, California. As she recovers from the depression that had overwhelmed her, she uses art to paint the emotional pain she suffers from her bipolar, her unsympathetic church, and her self-absorbed husband Zed. While she finds support in the community, her sister becomes another obstacle in her recovery, and causes a rift in Elise’s family.
Zed is devastated that Elise left him, especially because he cannot understand her. As the head of Zed Norris Ministries, he is accustomed to people seeking his counsel and following it without question. As Zed works to see life from Elise’s point of view, he begins to question the value of the prosperity gospel he preaches. At his congregation’s insistence, he travels to Jerusalem to find clarity, where he is faced with people and events that only bring him more questions.
Can Elise and Zed find their way back together or break with the past and forge new destinies?
Against the Wall was a finalist for the first five pages in the Promising Beginnings contest, 2018. The Tour, a memoir was published in the 2018 anthology of California Writers Club, Tri-Valley Branch. Her essay The Pack of Six was published by Bay Woof Magazine. Her non-fiction story, The Christmas Tree was published by Harlequin in the anthology, A Kiss Under the Mistletoe, 2013. Neva’s poetry and short stories have been published in anthologies.
