Monarch of the Heart: The Story, the Release, and What's Coming
Monarch of the Heart is my debut novel, a sweeping story of grief, courage, and unexpected love set in Mexico City during Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead. It releases October 1 in ebook, paperback, and hardback. Here is what the book is about, who it was written for, and everything that comes with it.
What is Monarch of the Heart about?
Rylee Taylor is a forty-five-year-old travel writer who has been a widow long enough for the world to expect her to be fine. She is not fine. She is functioning, which is not the same thing. With her two nearly grown children starting to build lives of their own, an assignment takes her to Mexico City in the last days of October, just as the marigolds flood the markets for Día de Muertos and the monarch butterflies arrive in the mountains for the season Mexico believes carries the souls of the dead home.
There she meets her guide, Joaquín Castillo, a man carrying losses of his own and a quieter way of living with them. Over the days of Día de Muertos, among the ofrendas, the candlelit cemeteries, and the returning monarchs, two people who have each learned how to survive find themselves asked something harder. To heal.
It is a love story. It is just as much a healing story. And its quiet refrain runs through every chapter. Surviving is not the same as healing.
Who is this book for?
If you have ever had to rebuild yourself after an ending, this story was written for you.
It is a later-in-life love story, slow burn and emotional first, tender rather than explicit, and yes, it ends the way a love story should. If you read for the feeling of a place as much as the people in it, or if you love Annabel Monaghan, Barbara O'Neal, or The Wedding People, you will feel at home here. You do not need to know anything about Día de Muertos to appreciate it. The story will teach you as it goes, the same way Mexico taught me.
Why I wrote it
I did not set out to write a novel about grief. I set out to understand my own.
My father died when I was twenty-six, suddenly, two days after he walked me down the aisle. His death is where my Día de Muertos tradition began. In the years after, I found the holiday, built my first ofrenda for him, and discovered a way of keeping someone that did not ask me to let him go.
But the grief that finally pushed this story onto the page was not the kind anyone sends flowers for. I was walking through a divorce from a man I loved, in a relationship that was complicated in the ways love usually is, and I was mourning a marriage no one else could see as a loss. At the same time I was living with a quieter grief, the kind with no ceremony at all. My mother is alive, and we have not spoken in years. She is here and not reachable, and there is no word for that on a sympathy card.
Three griefs at once, of three different kinds, and only one of them recognized by the world. Mexico gave me a place to set all of it down and finally look at it. Día de Muertos gave me a language for it. Somewhere in the marigold markets and the candlelit cemeteries of Mexico City, Rylee's story began, a woman carrying a loss more complicated than anyone around her knew. I know that woman. I have been her.
The emotion in these pages is not invented. I lived it. The longer story of where the book came from lives in the Behind the Scenes section of the Journal.
When and how can I get Monarch of the Heart?
Monarch of the Heart is available October 1 in three formats, ebook, paperback, and hardback, published by Monarch & Marigold Press. You can find all three on Amazon, and the ebook is also available to read through Kindle Unlimited. The paperback runs 452 pages, a full, immersive read rather than a quick one.
I chose October 1 on purpose. It is thirty days before Día de Muertos begins, so you can read the book as the season itself arrives. By the time the marigolds and the sugar skulls appear in the world around you, you will already know what they mean.
What comes with the book?
The novel is the heart of everything I make, and a whole story world has grown up around it.
Read the first chapter free. If you want to meet Rylee before you buy, read chapter one here. Sign up on that page and I will send you chapter two, along with notes on the real places behind the story.
A free Book Club Guide. Monarch of the Heart was made to be talked about, so there is a full guide with themed discussion questions, character studies, and host notes. It is written for readers who have finished the book, so save it for after the last page. Download the Book Club Guide.
The Journeys. Every place in the book is real, and you can go. The Journeys page gathers the tours that walk Rylee's road, Mexico City during Día de Muertos, the candlelit cemetery in Mixquic, the pyramids of Teotihuacán, the hot springs of Tolantongo, and the monarch sanctuaries of Michoacán.
The Spirit Guides. In the novel, the artist María gives her alebrijes monarch wings. My hand-carved alebrije Spirit Guides bring her art off the page, each one carrying monarch wings, a heart, and a marigold.
The Courage Collection. Bracelets made for the days you need to remember how strong you actually are. The Monarch bracelet is the piece closest to the book. You will find them in the Shop.
How you can help the story find its readers
If you read it and it stays with you, the kindest thing you can do is leave a review on Amazon or on Goodreads. Reviews are how a debut novel from a small press finds its way to the next reader. And come find me on Instagram and Facebook, where I share the real places, the people, and the traditions behind the story.
This book did not get a launch party. It got my family around a table, a few tears, and more than twenty-five years of sobriety, years of building ofrendas, and years of walking Mexico City in the last days of October, all of it finally in a story I get to put in your hands. I cannot wait for you to read it.
With much love for the journey,
Carrie
