The Hollow Beneath Our Hands

The Hollow That Breathes A novel of mercy, memory, and the mountain that learns to love you back. When Rowan Elkins returns to the hollow she swore she'd never see again, she finds the hills changed—and listening. The old mountain hums beneath her cabin, the rosemary grows in circles that never close, and every silence feels like someone waiting to be answered. Elias Holt, a craftsman with calloused hands and a past bound to the same ridge, knows the rhythm of that hum. He calls it the hollow's breath—the pulse that keeps the land alive. Together, Rowan and Elias begin to mend what time and leaving broke: porches, fences, promises. But every nail driven, every seed planted, stirs something older beneath the soil—something that remembers mercy as covenant, desire as language, and silence as prayer. As storms rise and roots begin to glow, Rowan learns that the mountain isn't haunting her. It's becoming her. And if she listens closely enough, she'll hear what the world has been trying to say since the first breath of earth: To keep something is to love it gently enough that it stays alive in you. The Hollow That Breathes blends Appalachian folklore, speculative intimacy, and quiet sensuality into a story about land that listens, love that labors, and the kind of magic that only grows where mercy takes root.