Debby Dodds in Conversation With Rene Denfeld

A searing exploration of memory, morality, and redemption, Debby Dodds’s Beyond Where Our Monsters Lie (Histria Fiction) follows one woman's journey from childhood complicity in hate to adult reckoning, forgiveness, and the embrace of her Jewish identity. It illuminates how personal choices intersect with history and the enduring weight of inherited trauma.

A childhood secret. A missing friend. Some monsters wear masks — others look just like your neighbor.

Halloween in 1991 New York City. Donna Dorn, a journalist clawing her way out of the "entertainment fluff" trenches, is haunted by more than the city's parade of ghouls and skeletons. Her real ghosts? They're the memories she's tried to bury for over a decade — memories of a friendship with her elderly neighbor, Mrs. Bardawulf, in a Pennsylvania suburb thick with secrets and whispers.

Donna's adult life is a maze of late-night writing, broken relationships, and a friendship with Mark, a rabbinical student who senses the storm beneath her sarcasm. But when Donna finally cracks open her past, she's forced to face what she did — and what she let happen — in a town where evil didn't hide under beds. It baked cakes, told fairy tales, and smiled across the street. Small-town nostalgia curdles into dread, and every answer leads to a new, darker question. How far would you go to belong? And what if the real monsters are the ones you loved?

Dodds will be joined in conversation by Rene Denfeld, author of The Talking Bone.