The Innermost House: A Memoir

“Salt air and the limits of memory animate this heartrending debut. . . . Readers will be captivated.”—Publishers Weekly
“Brimming with personal and historical details, The Innermost House is a distinctive memoir with a keen sense of place and renewal.”—Foreword Reviews
“Enthralling. . . . Blakeley is an evocative writer who captures the lush beauty of a ‘half feral’ childhood spent immersed in the natural world while never losing sight of the precarity and violence that permeated it.”—Nina Semczuk, Shelf Awareness
“Learning her family stories has helped Cynthia understand who they were, but also to better understand who she is. . . . Cynthia’s memoir, in its sweeping beauty, is ultimately a story of redemption, of healing and forgiveness.”—Robyn Fivush, Psychology Today
Publication Date: Dec. 1, 2024
Available in paperback, hardcover, e-book, and audiobook:
University of Massachusetts Press
and any places books are sold
Praise for The Innermost House

Cynthia Blakeley is a freelance academic editor and an instructor at Emory University in Atlanta, where she teaches courses on memory and memoir, interdisciplinary research, and theories of dream interpretation. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in Cape Cod Voice, HerStry, and Dreamers Magazine.