MEMOIR | For Agents & Publishers
Seven Stitches in Neverland
A Daughter, Her Homeless Mother, and the Peter Pan Costumes that Mended The Past
who this is forFor daughters caring for the parents who failed them.
For anyone loving someone who once caused harm.
For the adults caring for aging parents on one side and their own kids on the other. Squeezed in the middle.
If you liked..
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What My Bones Know
by Stephanie Foo, 2022
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The Many Lives of Mama Love
by Lara Love Hardin, 2023
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All My Knotted-Up-Life
by Beth Moore, 2023
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How to Lose Your Mother
Molly John-Fast, 2025
But with an estranged mother and daughter brought back together through homelessness, faith, and sewing Peter Pan costumes that become a literal and metaphorical act of mending.
Passage from the Book
It was February 2014. I’d driven eight hours from my home in Paso Robles to Redding, California, only to find myself in a parking lot behind a discount Dollar Store. There a refrigerator box lay on its side, draped with thick brown insulated blankets, and pushed up against the back wall of the store. I surveyed the scene and crouched down, looked inside the box, and saw a woman I barely recognized sitting cross-legged. I peered into her eyes and said, “Hello, Mother, I’ve been looking for you.”
What You'll Walk Away With
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Permission to hold two truths at once
You can love someone and still acknowledge the hurt they caused.
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A more honest view of healing
Healing doesn’t require erasing the past, and pretend the scars are gone.
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Hope for what comes next
Even after estrangement, loss, or heartbreak, forgiveness, peace, connection, or a new kind of home may still be possible.
books argumentForgiveness is a way forward.
You can show up without going back.
Compassion does not rewrite the past.
How It's Structured
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Prologue
Past Meets the Present
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Act I
Search for Estranged Mother
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Act II, Part I
Rescue from Homelessness
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Act II, Part II
Rebuilding a Lifetime of Trust
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Act III
Recognition and Forgiveness
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Epilogue
Lasting Transformation
Reviews
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"Seven Stitches in Neverland is one of those rare books that stays with you long after you’ve finished reading it. Honest, tender, and beautifully written, this is a story about family, hope, and the sometimes complicated path to forgiveness. I believe this book will live in your heart, as it does in mine."
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"A professional team that delivers on their promises."
—Former Customer
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"Every detail was thoughtfully executed. We're thrilled with the outcome."
—Former Customer
One-of-a-Kind Lens
This story is told through a lens of [your unique perspective, e.g., cultural background, emotional truth, life experience, style of storytelling].
It [what it does emotionally or stylistically, e.g., softens the sharp edges / finds beauty in the brutal / refuses to look away / blends humor and heartbreak].
✺ Frequently asked questions ✺
Does Seven Stitches in Neverland include citations or research?
Seven Stitches in Neverland is primarily a narrative memoir grounded in the author’s lived experience.
Is Seven Stitches in Neverland part of a series?
Seven Stitches in Neverland is designed to stand on its own as a complete memoir. However, it is also intended to be followed by a companion prescriptive workbook for readers navigating family estrangement.
Where the memoir tells the story of one mother and daughter finding their way back to each other after fifteen years apart, the companion workbook will help readers examine their own family relationships and determine what healing can look like for them. Through guided reflection and practical exercises, it will address themes such as boundaries, unresolved hurt, expectations, forgiveness, reconnection, and the recognition that reconciliation is not always possible—or appropriate.
Together, the books serve two distinct purposes: the memoir offers story, recognition, and hope; the workbook helps readers translate those insights into thoughtful action in their own lives.
Has Seven Stitches in Neverland been professionally edited?
Seven Stitches in Neverland has not yet undergone professional line or copyediting. The manuscript has, however, been developmentally edited with the guidance of a writing coach and has undergone extensive critique and workshop review in a mentor-led writing group. This process has included multiple rounds of revision focused on narrative structure, character development, pacing, thematic coherence, and the memoir’s emotional arc.
The writing has also received outside recognition: “Lost and Found,” the memoir’s prologue, was named a finalist in nonfiction in the 2025 San Francisco Writers’ Conference Writing Contest.
What is the central argument of Seven Stitches in Neverland?
Reconciliation cannot erase the past, but when circumstances allow it, compassion, boundaries, perseverance, faith, and forgiveness can create the possibility of healing even after years of estrangement. Healing does not require forgetting what happened or restoring a relationship to what it once was; sometimes it means learning to see another person—and the past—with greater clarity while choosing what to carry forward.
What books is Seven Stitches in Neverland similar to?
Readers of Molly Jong-Fast’s How to Lose Your Mother, Stephanie Foo’s What My Bones Know, and Beth Moore’s All My Knotted-Up Life will recognize themes of complicated mother-daughter relationships, childhood wounds, family trauma, resilience, forgiveness, and the difficult work of making meaning from the past. Like these memoirs, Seven Stitches in Neverland explores what happens when an adult daughter reexamines the family story that shaped her and considers whether healing is possible without denying the pain that came before.
Seven Stitches in Neverland is distinct in the way it intertwines the rescue and rehousing of the author’s estranged, homeless mother with the author’s simultaneous production of Peter Pan. As the Lost Boys search for belonging onstage, the author confronts her own identity as a lost child offstage. When mother and daughter begin sewing costumes for the production together, the practical work of stitching creates a place where they can reconnect without pretending the past did not happen. The act of sewing becomes both a literal and narrative thread through the memoir—a tangible expression of repair, perseverance, and the fragile possibility of reconciliation.