Mary Beth McGruder is a native Nashvillian who moved to the North Carolina coast, where she writes about love, marriage, grief, and the small mercies that keep us afloat.

Her represented novel, The Letters No One Signed, is upmarket fiction with speculative elements. At forty-six and newly divorced, Delia Thomas returns to her late mother’s Tennessee farmhouse determined to sell it and leave again. Instead, she gets a pregnant barn cat, a dead ex-boyfriend with unfinished business, and a growing line of ghosts who want her to write letters on their behalf.

Delia becomes an unlikely intermediary, carrying secrets, unfinished truths, and details no stranger could know. But the one voice she wants most, her mother’s, remains silent. At its heart, The Letters No One Signed is a story about family grief, inherited silence, and the impossible ways the living try to reconcile with those they have lost.

Before turning to writing full time, Mary Beth spent more than twenty-five years in user experience design and product storytelling, work that deepened her interest in human behavior, the stories people tell about themselves, and the gap between what they say and what they do.

She lives near the water with her husband, Bryan, and their Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Mrs. Bigglesworth, and is at work on her next novel.

Represented by Jenny Bent & James Mustelier, The Bent Agency