Shelley Thrasher

A tribute to the value of self-awareness and self-kindness, Untethered is the heartwarming story of a vacation gone wrong that leads to an unexpected journey of the heart.

Helen Rogers is ready for a relaxing cruise in Bali with her friends and married couple Martha Jo and Amy. After flying from Dallas to Australia, they board a small ship bound for Bali, only to quickly realize they have stumbled into a strenuous expedition more suited to CrossFit enthusiasts than vacationers like themselves in their seventies and eighties. Amid shipboard chaos and excursions to seldom-visited Indonesian islands, Helen becomes mesmerized by the younger, enigmatic Grace—unhappily married and searching for a resolution.

Things go from bad to worse when Helen and Amy become ill and must stay in isolation. Totally alone for the first time, memories of her time with Grace begin to haunt Helen. Was Grace’s last declaration that she was returning to her husband true? Why does Helen always fall for unavailable women? Could it have something to do with her lifelong aversion to meeting strangers and socializing in general?

After a nightmarish flight home and several months of recovery and reflection, Helen uncovers an earth-shattering realization that will change her life, and the possibilities of love, forever.

Guided by a vision of her recently deceased mother, Dallas socialite Barbara Allan travels through Cambodia searching for clues about her mother’s enigmatic past. After a busy two-week adventure tour, Barbara intends to rest on a tropical island off the southern coast, but instead contracts a deadly virus that’s swept the country.

Her tour guide, Dara, unemployed because of tourists’ fear of the virus, helps Barbara recover. Determined to uncover her mother’s secrets, Barbara and Dara motorcycle up the east bank of the Mekong River. On their way, they discover an irresistible attraction that only grows stronger as they unravel the mystery of Barbara’s mother’s early life in Cambodia, with the help of the wise, altruistic Chantha.

Bree Principal and Linda Morton have sacrificed their personal lives for career and family. Now, in her late sixties, Bree is forced to return to her hometown in East Texas, where she begins to discover things about herself she has refused to acknowledge for fifty years. Do both she and Linda—who is finally out and proud—have the courage to claim the type of life they've never allowed themselves to embrace?

It's summer in Paris, 1972. Frenchwoman Eva Laroche wants to pass her bar exams and get a good job as a trial attorney, but she's working as a tour guide to pay off debts. American beauty Brigitte Green wants to find a new home in Paris and forget her past that haunts her with vivid waking dreams. Though the beauty of Paris and the magic of its rich feminist culture draw them ever closer, a secret from Brigitte's past life threatens to destroy their chance for a future together. Can their fragile love flourish in the City of Light?

Jacqueline "Jaq" Bergeron—New Orleanian, suffragist, freethinker—drove an ambulance on the battlefields of Europe during the Great War. She returns home and finds herself isolated in rural East Texas, keeping house for her war-hero husband as she awaits his promised divorce and plans her escape. But then she meets Molly.

Molly Russell lives for her music, which sustains her as she cares for her son and husband, and suffers her mother-in-law. When she meets Jaq, a world she never imagined opens to hera world entirely out of reach.

With the storm of war still raging in Europe and other battles to be fought at home, can two women bound by the land and family ties find the freedom to love and build a life together?