When August Caine receives an unexpected call informing her of her Aunt Helen’s recent death, she’s certain it must be a mistake. After all, her Aunt Helen died fifteen years ago. So begins Sandra K. Griffith’s One Beautiful Year of Normal, part murder mystery, part family saga, part love story.
Returning to Savannah to learn the truth about Helen doesn’t upend August’s life; August’s life has already been nearly permanently upended since the murder of her father on her eighth birthday. In fact, the only time her life wasn’t filled with instability, grief, and paranoia was the one beautifully normal year she spent with Helen when she was eleven.
As the story alternates between that year filled with ghost stories, first crushes, and cat-head biscuits, and August’s return to the house she once shared with Helen, we build a picture of the two very different women who shaped August’s life. Helen—warm, quirky, filling her house with friends and celebrations. And August’s mother—austere, poised, wielding mutism like a knife. But what is the truth of these women? Why did August’s mother tell her Helen had died all those years ago? And what secrets was Helen hiding during their year together?
The answers seem tangled in the murder of August’s father, and as Helen’s house begins to trigger long-buried memories, August has to confront her darkest fears about herself and her family.
The city of Savannah, trailing hauntings and Spanish moss like a tattered bridal veil, lends a lush backdrop to this story of the legacies we carry. A constant theme in the novel is time and how the past and present bleed together. We see a collection of stopwatches under glass domes, each frozen at a particular minute. We hear the constant chime of Helen’s grandfather clock. And we see the still glowing stars that August’s father affixed to his childhood bedroom ceiling. These images are reminders not just that the past is always with us, but that sometimes the past is yet to find us. After all, the lights we see in the night sky left their stars many years ago. Perhaps, some of Helen’s greatest gifts to August are making a similar journey.
Time is also captured in photographs throughout the novel. August’s father was a famous photojournalist and much of what we learn about the man comes to us through the images he left behind. But just as telling are the photos that don’t exist. The apartment young August shares with her mentally ill mother before Helen’s rescue is marked by its absence of photos, or anything personal for that matter. Her mother has removed every trace of their lives with August’s father. A stark erasure of the past contrasted by Helen’s preservation of history in the house her family has occupied for generations.
At its heart, One Beautiful Year of Normal is a story about stories. Forced at a young age to become her mother’s caretaker, August is a practical, logical child: She doesn’t believe in ghosts. She doesn’t believe in anything after death. Yet she revels in helping Helen pen new tales for her ghost tour business. As an adult, August is a ghostwriter, telling the stories of others, while keeping her own as untold as possible.
But as the secrets she unravels in Savannah yield more questions, August may have to choose a story to believe in for the first time in her life. Will it be her mother’s? Helen’s? Something of August’s own? Perhaps the truth lies not in the logical facts, but in something beyond what we can see in front of us. August’s story is one of tragedy, heartache, and ghosts. But it is also a story of love, remembrance, and hope. And it is in the blending of the two that we may find the story we need to carry us through the present and into the future.
Publisher: She Writes Press
Publication Date: February 24, 2026
Reviewed by B.B. Garin
B. B. Garin is a writer living in Buffalo, NY. Her story collection, New Songs for Old Radios, is available from Wordrunner Press. She is a recipient of the Sara Patton Fiction Stipend from The Writer’s Hotel. Her work has appeared in The Hawai’i Pacific Review, Luna Station Quarterly, Palooka, 3rd Wednesday, Crack the Spine, and more. Connect with her @bb_garin or bbgarin.wordpress.com.
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