Roots & Roads

The root network beneath the Wildwood is failing. The woman whose hands can feel it doesn't know why she can.

Nell Alder has been in Briarhold for a year. She has a rescue with a sign, a community that decided she suits it, and hands that do things she's never learned. She also has a name she can't stop thinking about, a tool that fits her palms like it was made for them, and an ancient forest whose oldest roots are breaking in ways only she can feel.

Something built the network beneath the Wildwood centuries ago. Something with hands like hers. Cai has been watching her work in the deep northern quarter for eighteen months, and he's ready to tell her what he sees.

When a dead woman's letters reveal five missing years Nell didn't know she'd lost, the shape of who she was begins to surface - not as memory, but as recognition. And somewhere on a distant road, people who loved her once are finally heading in the right direction.

Nell Alder found her home. Now she has to find herself.

Roots & Roads is the second book in the Whiskers & Wildwood trilogy - a slow-burn cozy fantasy about found family, quiet magic, and the particular courage of staying. For readers of A Psalm for the Wild-Built, The Spellshop, and The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches.