I’ve been a speech therapist for 42 years, working in Utah. I’ve worked in the school system, hospitals, and private practice, and I spent ten (often hair-raising) years in home health. Those years going into people’s homes gave me the idea for this series. What if I put a speech therapist in a remote part of the country and have almost everything go wrong? I added a mystery in each book, quirky and lovable characters, and a swoon-worthy love interest.
A new job in rural Pennsylvania. How hard can five patients be?
In this cozy mystery set in rural Pennsylvania, a young woman from San Francisco searches for her birth parents while beginning her first job as a home-health speech pathologist. She soon learns how hard one job can be as she navigates the backwoods of Tungston, (“Tungs”) trying to comply with the needs of her quirky patients, all the while being stalked by a violent fugitive, and finding herself unexpectedly falling for the charms of a small-town, including one hot fireman. Through no fault of her own, she exposes a criminal who has been safely hidden in the thick forest, and now as he tries to stop her from exposing him, her patients’ lives, as well as her own are in jeopardy.
Book 2 of the Speaking in Tungs Cozy Mystery series
Marleigh Benning is positive she’s mastered being a home speech therapist in the most remote region of Pennsylvania… and that the steep learning curve is behind her. But further surprises await around the next bend, as her six unpredictable clients keep her off balance; her relationship with a local fireman heats up to alarm-level arson; and she discovers why her birth parents were placed in witness protection. The biggest danger Marleigh faces as she traverses the rolling terrain, going house by house is her inadvertent entanglement in a clandestine heroin operation. Once again, will she be able to keep her clients safe and herself alive long enough to find the answers she has come searching for?
Book 3 in the Speaking in Tungs series OUT NOW!
Marleigh continues her summer contract as a speech therapist in rural Pennsylvania. Despite two near-death experiences, she pushes ahead to help her home-health patients while circling closer to answers about where her birth parents might have gone after leaving the witness protection program. Her romance with the local fireman deepens as do her worries. Should she get involved with why dead birds are turning up near her patient’s home or leave it to the locals? Or at summer’s end, if she doesn’t have answers about her past or definite ideas about her future, what should she do?