Rift Zone

Some decisions can't be undone. Some silences do more damage than words. And some ordinary lives, quietly breaking apart, contain more courage than anyone around them will ever know.

In these thirteen stories, Sarah P. Blanchard takes readers into the interior lives of everyday people navigating hardship, love, betrayal, and the fragile hope that something better is still possible. Set against the landscapes of rural New England, the Carolina mountains, and the Hawaiian coast, Rift Zone moves between darkness and unexpected humor with the sure-footed control of a writer who trusts her characters - and her readers - completely.

A woman refuses to see what she cannot bear to know. A bus driver does something small that changes everything. A family holds itself together with silence and love in nearly equal measure. Story by story, Blanchard maps the fault lines where ordinary lives shift and crack - and sometimes, remarkably, hold.

Rift Zone will appeal to readers of Elizabeth Strout and Ron Rash - writers who find the universal in the deeply particular, and who believe that the quietest stories are often the most devastating.

Sarah P. Blanchard is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, and poet. Her debut novel Drawn from Life won the 2025 Independent Press Award for New Adult Fiction. Rift Zone is published by Eagle Ridge Press.