It was an unlikely scene, an awards ceremony, that made me cry when I read Rhonda McKnight’s novel Writer in Residence. My family would laugh though, saying everything makes me cry. This is a strong story about a woman searching for her identity and finding home.
Alexandra Chambers has written twenty-nine romances as Alex Wesley, but she has writer’s block, and she’s lost. According to her editor and agent, she’s stuck in the past, and hasn’t moved with the times and the romance genre. She doesn’t have a contract when she accompanies her mother to hear another author, Gabriel Scott, talk about his book. She’s shocked to realize the man she knew a few years ago as Gabe Scott, a bookseller, is now the winner of the National Book Critics Award for debut memoir, and a Pulitzer finalist. She can’t help but compare her romance writing and writer’s block with Gabe’s success.
Alexandra feels lost, but when she wins a week at the Writer in Resdience cabin at the Lowcountry Literacy Center in South Carolina, she’s reluctant to go. Her lack of a contract forces her hand, though. She doesn’t realize Gabe Scott is the Director of the literacy center. He’s going on book tour, and offers her a summer working with the literacy program for young people, with the summer in the cabin and a stipend. Now, she’s grasping the opportunity.
As Alexandra gets to know the teens in the program, and Miss Kate, the Gullah woman who cleans the center, she begins to feel at home. The Gullah speech, culture and food touch her. Alex has always longed for family beyond just her mother and aunt, and when a supposed first cousin reaches out on Ancestry, she’s enthusiastic. But, her search leads her right to Edisto Island, and uncovers lies her mother told her. Now, Alex truly begins to doubt everything she knows about her family and herself.
This subtitle is used to define Writer in Residence: “A Bookish Small-Town Romance with Southern Charm, Literary Themes, and Emotional Depth”. This isn’t as light as most romances, though, and that subtitle doesn’t do it justice. It’s a meaty story of relationships and family, built on the culture and history of the Gullah Geechee people. As McKnight introduces them before the story, those are “descendants of Africans enslaved on the rice indigo and cotton plantations of the lower Atlantic states.” Because the plantation owners didn’t want to live on the islands, the people kept their unique culture. This is the language and food, the people that Alexandra Chambers finds a connection with when she searches for answers.
Writer in Residence is a warm romance featuring a struggling writer. It’s a novel of forgiveness and love, writing and literacy programs. It’s the story of a woman finding community and home.
Rhonda McKnight’s website is https://rhondamcknight.com/
Writer in Residence by Rhonda McKnight. Thomas Nelson, 2026. 363p.
FTC Full Disclosure – The publisher supplied a galley through NetGalley, with no expectation of a positive review.
