IF YOU LEAVE
A novel
The Pet Bird in pastel, Margaret Hutton
Regal House Publishing
Fall 2025
When an art collector takes an interest in one of her older paintings, Audrey Bray may earn the means to finally end her embittered marriage to Ben. But her determination to leave him flags when an old friend, Lucille, returns to Washington. Her arrival dredges up painful memories from their time together during World War II, when Audrey opened her home to Lucille—a simple act of shelter with lasting consequences. Chafing under her husband’s false promises, Lucille’s nearly unforgivable estrangement, and the responsibility to care for a daughter, Lake, who’s cutting her own artistic—and potentially dangerous—path in the turbulent 1960s and ‘70s, Audrey must resolve at last the tensions between creativity and motherhood, duty and self. Read more about If You Leave.