The door to the past has been locked to May but fragments of memories still remain: a boy running on the green, his fiery hair, a letter without a stamp, a secret she promised not to tell. She can’t piece together the past or even make sense of the present, but she revisits what she knows again and again. The boy, the letter, the secret. She can’t grasp what they mean, but maybe the people she’s loved and lost can uncover the mystery of the red-headed boy and his connection to May.

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Like memories, the book moves through the decades, weaving together the lives of May’s family and the woman who cares for her at the nursing home. Their recollections are linked by feelings of doubt, remorse and a sense that they are mourning the paths their lives could have taken. Aftershocks from the past reverberate in the present.

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Naomi Kruger’s debut novel is a contemplative tale of what it means to carry the past with you and the power of letting it go.

'A rewarding read: an ambitious novel that speaks to our times.' – Wales Arts Review

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'An exquisitely written novel.' – Jan Carson

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'A triumph... contemporary, funny, relevant and personal.' – Buzz Magazine

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'A deftly-written and highly moving account of the effects of dementia.' – Everybody's Reviewing

Naomi Krüger is a writer and academic based in Lancashire. Her debut novel, May, (Seren, 2018) is partly narrated by a character with dementia and explores the complexity of memory from multiple perspectives. Her short fiction has been published in Wag’s Revue, commended by Aesthetica and commissioned for various anthologies.

In 2021 she was awarded an Eccles Centre Fellowship at the British Library to explore transatlantic connections of faith, conversion, and emigration in early Mormonism as research for her second novel. She has an MA and PhD from Lancaster University, and

is a Senior Lecturer in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Central Lancashire.