The Signal

A literary father–daughter novel about memory, forgiveness, and the search for belonging.

He wrote detectives who lived in shadows. She grew up searching for a signal in the static. When Jeff Griffin and Zoe MacKenzie meet, silence gives way to memory, music, and the chance to belong.

Jeff Griffin built his name writing acclaimed crime novels set in postwar New Orleans—but spent decades hiding from his own past. Zoe MacKenzie grew up without him, raised on stories instead of a father. For more than 18 years, Zoe MacKenzie only knew half her story. Then, on the edge of adulthood, she meets Jeff Griffin—the father she never knew, a novelist who built walls out of words and lived behind them.

What begins as a fragile reunion unfolds into a year of firsts: a rooftop birthday that changes everything, a daughter learning who she is, and a father learning how to be one. Old wounds surface—between Jeff and Carly, the woman who raised Zoe alone, between Jeff and his past mistakes, and between Zoe and the silence that defined her childhood.

Through music, memoir, and long-buried secrets, Jeff and Zoe begin to find the signal beneath the static. But trust is fragile, and family is complicated. To belong to each other, they'll have to face not just what's been lost—but what might still be found.

The Signal Between Us is the first novel in The Signal Series: an emotional, literary family saga about memory, reconciliation, and the invisible threads that tie us together.