Books
ON SUBMISSION
The Rose Never
Folds Its Petals
Some tragedies come
when you are too
young to understand
that bad things can happen to good people.
THE
ROSE
NEVER FOLDS
ITS
PETALS
NADINE BJURSTEN
A Novel
In an ancient village in Iran’s Central Desert, an impetuous 8-year-old girl is involved in an accident that claims her parents' lives. From a world of poetry, roses, beauty, laughter, and love she is thrust into a joyless life of duty under a strict grandmother hoping to obtain absolution for her bad nature. Her grandmother dies and now a teenager, she has been given a chance for a future. She takes it. She starts university in Tehran and soon finds herself married to Farzad, a high-powered activist. The revolution unfolds, leading her on a journey that will either make or break her.
The novel was selected as a finalist for the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction and longlisted for the 2019 Mslexia Novel Competition and the 2016 Bath Novel Award. It also advanced to the second stage of the 2019 Craft First Chapters Contest.
COMPLETED
The Point
Where the Light Breaks
The point
Where the
Light breaks
Nadine Bjursten
A Novel
August Holck has never managed to find his footing among the strong women around him. Now that the refugees have arrived, he has his chance.
When the refugee boys arrive, the whole town is thrown into conflict. August, a quirky pastor from an old city in Sweden, takes young Malek, Sami, and Hassan into his charge, and begins a journey that will end up changing all their lives forever.
The manuscript was nominated for the 2018 Geneva Literary Prize for fiction and won an honorable mention.
WRITING
The Birdmaker of Moscow
A New York editor who is trying to hold on to her job and marriage suddenly finds herself in Russia in winter with her estranged brother, sent on a literary tour of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy by a father with a purpose.
The
Birdmaker
of
Moscow
A Novel
NADINE BJURSTEN
Katie has a life that looks perfect from the outside. She heads a leading technology magazine in New York City, is married to a successful Wall Street analyst and owns a luxurious apartment on the Upper West Side. The reality is less than perfect. Every moment of her life is spent trying to meet the increasing demands of an elderly father, an exacting boss, and a driven husband. It has been years since she smiled or did her favorite thing: read a book.
At lunch her father surprises her with a literary tour to Russia. The timing is terrible. Fearing that her father is dying, and despite a new hire who threatens her position, she agrees to go. At the airport, instead of her father, however, she finds her estranged brother, Alex, who she hasn't seen since their father's 75th birthday party.
Katie begins a journey with her brother that will take them from Dostoevsky’s St. Petersburg to Tolstoy’s childhood home, Yasnaya Polayana, south of Moscow. On the train, the siblings meet Sergei, a birdmaker, who she hasn't seen since their shared tragedy seven years ago. Her foundation is further shaken by the news that their guide, Oksana, is not who she appears to be.
As Katie and her brother follow the footsteps of Russia’s literary giants, Katie slowly unravels not only the knot of lies she has been told her whole life, but the lies she has weaved around herself. She will discover that even harder than forgiving the people closest to her, is forgiving herself, and whether it is even possible to get another chance.
The Soft Earth
Can a single act of love change a village, a country?
WRITING
Four interrelated characters and one accident that will change them all.