The Guilt of the Good

Adult Fantasy | 87,000 words | Where grief, machinery, and myth collide

Jacob Hardwyn has spent thirteen years believing one thing: he killed his mother. His nightmares return every year in the days before his birthday. The flames that burst from his skin, the scream he can't forget, and a father who has never let him speak of it.

William still lives in the same cabin they all shared while she was alive. Everything he has built for Woodland Falls was meant to protect the town. Everything he has hidden from Jacob was meant to protect his son.

He sends Jacob up the mountain to ready the overlook for the town's annual festival. While he is working, a scarred grizzly with one impossible blue eye comes out of the forest, and it is the animal from his nightmare. The truth Jacob stopped asking for years ago finds him first, and what it sets in motion, not even his father can contain.

The Guilt of the Good is an adult upmarket fantasy about the wreckage that love leaves behind when it refuses to let go, blending the buried family secret and braided viewpoints of Peng Shepherd's The Cartographers with the family-driven quest and quiet wonder of Samantha Sotto Yambao's Water Moon.