15 Novels That Spotlight Women’s Mental Health

Beneath the Swaying Willow by Amily D’nas

Tensions are running high throughout the United States in 1970 when a young couple, Nora Thompson and Russ Ayers, are suddenly torn apart when he is drafted and deployed to Vietnam. Fate soon fills the unwanted wedge between them with new experiences, forever changing who they are and the trajectory of their lives.

Russ returns home haunted by the horrors of war and struggling with PTSD. When things spiral out of control Nora must draw upon her inner strength to help Russ, to stand up for what she believes in, and to fight injustice. It is only then that she is able to find her true self and that a secret she has been keeping is unveiled.

Inspired by true events, Beneath the Swaying Willow is a riveting account of love, sacrifice and human struggle that shines a light on the destructive, ugly side of humanity, and shows how one woman’s courage can be the catalyst for positive change to occur.

Such a Good Family by Caitlin Weaver

An unforgettable and emotionally charged story of two families whose lives are changed forever by a devastating accusation.

Lorrie and Eden have been best friends ever since they bonded as newcomers to their affluent suburb when their kids were little. They’re used to letting themselves into each other’s houses for coffee after school drop-off, and gossiping about their neighbours over wine at their book club. When their teenage kids, Knox and Summer, start dating just before graduation, they’re surprised but delighted; after all, they’ve been planning their wedding since the kids were toddlers splashing around in the paddling pool together.

But one night Knox comes home late after a party with scratches on his collarbone, refusing to tell Lorrie what happened, and heading straight for the shower. The next morning Eden gets a call every mother dreads: Summer is in hospital.

Lorrie struggles to keep her family together while Eden deals with PTSD from her past history of sexual assault. As the fallout from what really happened that night rips their tight-knit, privileged community apart and decimates Eden and Lorrie’s friendship, none of their lives will ever be the same again.

The False Flat by Melissa R. Collings

In this uplifting story about friendship, love, and growth, one woman must untangle herself from the past in order to move forward into a life that will set her free.

Penelope Auberge is at her breaking point. With an overbearing mother, a married boyfriend, and a boss who gives Pen’s high-profile finance clients to male colleagues, it feels like nothing she’s accomplished in her thirty-two years belongs to her.

Determined to build a life entirely her own, Pen moves from Minnesota to Tennessee to open a solo financial business, while self-treating her anxiety and panic disorder with frantic bicycle riding and Cap’n Crunch. In Nashville, she meets siblings Deanna and Grant, who attempt to coax Pen out of her socially anxious shell. Hesitant to open up so she doesn’t get hurt (again), Pen is slow to develop a friendship with Deanna, and she’s determined to ignore her feelings for Grant, which is difficult given she’s joined his cycling group and a clear something begins blossoming between them.

Pen’s path appears to be smoothing out, but she soon learns that packing up her past isn’t quite that easy.

Five Tries to Get it Right by Kathryn Dodson

When her best friend hits rock bottom, a lonely widow convinces her to join a worldwide voyage retracing their wild youth in a last-ditch effort to heal heartache and reclaim meaning.

Lydia is a teacher in a small town who can’t imagine life alone after her husband’s death. Kate built a successful career, but now faces emptiness after divorce and professional failure.

The long-time friends travel to the exotic locales of their youth, trying to find meaning amidst heartache and loss. In Spain, Amsterdam, the Caribbean, Australia, and finally Costa Rica, they reignite passions for life and love that time had extinguished. But Kate still plans to end it all, until a surfer from the past offers Lydia another chance, forcing her to choose between saving her friend or herself.

Will Rise from Ashes by Jean M. Grant

Living is more than mere survival…

Young widow AJ Sinclair has persevered through much heartache. Has she met her match when the Yellowstone super volcano erupts, leaving her separated from her youngest son and her brother? Tens of thousands are dead or missing in a swath of massive destruction. She and her nine-year-old autistic son Will embark on a risky road trip from Maine to the epicenter to find her family. She can’t lose another loved one.

Along the way, they meet Reid Gregory, who travels his own road to perdition looking for his sister. Drawn together by AJ’s fear of driving and Reid’s military and local expertise, their journey to Colorado is fraught with the chaotic aftermath of the eruption. AJ’s anxiety and faith in humanity are put to the test as she heals her past, accepts her family’s present, and embraces uncertainty as Will and Reid show her a world she had almost forgotten.

The Serendipity of Catastrophe by Lisa Fellinger

Anita Lorello is paralyzed by grief. When her husband dies in an accident the night before a long-awaited retirement trip, she’s devastated by the loss and shelves her dream to finally visit Europe. But when her estranged daughter agrees to accompany her nearly a year later, Anita is eager for the opportunity to repair their relationship.

Carrie Lorello’s life is crumbling. After a night of clouded judgment ends in her being fired, her mother’s offer of a paid vacation seems like her best option. But she refuses to get caught up in her mother’s irrational worries and critical comments, and under no circumstances is she to learn what a failure Carrie’s proven to be.

Desperate not to lose her daughter again, Anita fights to conquer her anxiety and become the mother Carrie always wanted. But as Carrie’s life grows more complicated, her mother is the last person she wants to confide in. Without anyone else to hold them together, can Anita and Carrie overcome their differences, or will the secrets between them derail their trip and relationship for good?

The Invisible Ones by Jamie Grookett

In 1928, rural Pennsylvania, Children’s Aid Society separates seventeen-year-old Anna Wilson from her three younger siblings. Anna is hurled into despair when abused by her foster brother. Illiterate, pregnant, and fearing the permanent estrangement from her family, she is committed to an asylum where she must prove her competency before a panel of doctors who believe in the practice of American eugenics. At stake: the chance at freedom to raise her unborn child and beloved siblings on the farm she calls home.

The Invisible Ones tells the story of one girl’s struggle to free herself from an asylum during a time when women were locked away due to their family history or past trauma. The story demonstrates the strength these women possessed despite their being deemed feeble-minded and mentally unfit for society.

Principles of (E)motion by Sara Read

Mathematical genius Dr. Meg Brightwood has just completed her life’s work—a proof of a problem so impenetrable it’s nicknamed the Impossible Theorem. Reclusive and burdened by anxiety, Meg has long since been dismissed by academia. Now everyone wants to get their hands on what she alone possesses—especially her own mathematician father.

Having grown up a prodigy in a field plagued by sexism and plagiarism, Meg opts for a public presentation so there will be no doubt of her authorship. But a panic attack obliterates her plans. In defeat, she goes home and locks away the only manuscript of her proof.

Then chance sends her the unlikeliest of allies: Isaac Wells—carpenter, high school dropout, in trouble with the law. And the one love of Meg’s life. Fifteen years ago, they did little more than hold hands. Now, they find a tenuous space where they can love and be loved for who they are as adults.

But when Meg goes to retrieve her proof, she finds it missing. Her fight for the achievement of the century will test the limits of her brilliance and the endurance of two vulnerable hearts.

Leave Everything You Know Behind by Ginny Fite

Cranky, aging newspaper publisher Anne Canfield is determined to live forever, no matter what. Young, brilliant writer and teacher Indira Anand wants to die. But on the winter morning Anne saves Indira from drowning, everything changes.

That evening, Anne stumbles and falls. Diagnosed with incurable brain cancer and only months to live, Anne must hurry to save her newspaper, heal her regrets, keep her secrets hidden, and protect her son from the truth before time runs out.

Faced with a recurrence of ovarian cancer and an overwhelming probability that she will die, Indira wants to end her life before the pain she watched her grandmother endure strikes. To end her life according to the death with dignity laws in Vermont, she must prove she’s not mentally ill, an incongruity that drives her to distraction. Out of options, Indira reaches out to Anne, and they make a pact to help each other.

The Hint of Light by Kristin Kisska

In the wake of her son’s sudden death, Margaret Dobrescu struggles to keep it together in the face of her grief…and her guilt. She can’t help but blame herself for Kyle’s own lifelong struggles—namely, the alcoholism that plagued him.
 

But within mere days of his funeral, secrets and suspicions begin to surface, and Margaret’s husband admits that Kyle once confessed to having a daughter. Clinging to the hope that some part of her son is still out there, Margaret embarks on a search to find her rumored granddaughter.

What Margaret hasn’t prepared for, however, is the deluge of secrets that keep coming. And as she digs deeper and deeper into her son’s life to find the truth, what she finds instead is that her own secrets can’t stay buried forever.

The Pharaoh's Dark Garden by Harlie Sponaugle

The Pharaoh’s Great Royal Wife commands Senara, her Overseer of Musicians, to track down the royal daughter’s murderer or face exile from her beloved Egypt. To save the life of her unborn child, Senara must confront her inner demons and self-doubt and apprehend the monster who is terrorizing the Kingdom.

Depression threatens to derail Senara’s dangerous quest at every turn. She hides her struggle from her main ally, the Pharaoh’s Great Royal Wife, but finds support in the voice of her dead sister who comes to her in her darkest hours.
 

Evoking Jacqueline Winspear and Charles Todd through the lens of an ancient culture, The Pharaoh’s Dark Garden portrays an unlikely hunter in a desperate search for her prey.

Christmas by Candlelight by Sylvie Kurtz

She’s duty bound to a family dream. With a slew of struggles and surprises, can she make this holiday season one to remember?

Claire Chandler’s passion has been put on hold. After her parents unexpectedly pass away, she turns down a coveted wildlife photography grant to move back to New Hampshire and run their inn. But her grief makes it difficult to provide the joyful experience the guests expect. When a face from the past whose vacation she ruined as a kid shows up as a guest, she vows to turn the grumpy author’s stay into a fun-filled festive retreat and help herself find Christmas joy in the process.

Struggling to keep up with everyone’s never-ending demands, Claire does her best to help her prickly adversary reclaim his muse. Then there’s her aunt, struggling with agoraphobia, and Claire has no idea how to help her. But as she juggles a ruthless cookie tour, an ex-boyfriend’s sudden arrival, her aunt and the writer, not to mention a powerful nor’easter cutting the power, she fears all they’ll unwrap is disappointment. Will the overwhelmed host survive a snowstorm of stress and restore the Yuletide cheer?

Take It From Me by Jamie Beck

Wendy Moore hides her collection of pilfered bric-a-brac from everyone, including her husband. He thinks she licked her kleptomania in therapy more than a decade ago. Therapy did help, as did focusing her attention on motherhood. But now Wendy’s gardening and furniture-refinishing hobbies fill up only so much of the day, leaving the recent empty nester lonely and anxious—a combination likely to trigger her little problem. She needs a project, fast. Luckily, Harper Ross—a single, childless younger woman in desperate need of highlights—just moved in next door.

The only thing Harper wants to change is the writer’s block toppling her confidence and career. Then a muse comes knocking. Sensing fodder for a new antagonist, Harper plays along with Wendy’s “helpful” advice while keeping her career a secret so Wendy keeps talking. Sure, she’s torn about profiting off her neighbor’s goodwill—especially when Wendy’s matchmaking actually pans out—but Harper’s novel is practically writing itself.

Just as a real friendship begins to cement, their deceptions come to light, threatening

Wendy’s and Harper’s futures and forcing them to reconcile who they are with who they want to be. Easier said than done.

Maplewood by Amy Q. Barker

A story of second chances at life, in a place where courage, strength, and healing live—Maplewood.

Amanda Morgan is in a deep depression after the loss of her husband in a terrorist attack. She’s begun counseling, but her grief and sadness stretches out in front of her like a vast sea of darkness. What’s the point in trying to fix something that will never end?

Jonathan Galway’s thirteen-year marriage to a woman who suffers from bipolar disorder has come to an end. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t fix her, and his failure eats at him. In the aftermath, he’s resigned himself to being alone. What happens when he runs into his high school sweetheart, Amanda?

Enter Maplewood. A sleepy street in a sleepy town. A town where everyone knows your name. And your business. Will these two survivors allow themselves to embrace life again? Set in the majestic Fingers Lakes region of Western New York, follow Amanda and Jonathan’s inspiring journey of healing, redemption, courage, and love.

Sophie Last Seen by Marlene Adelstein

In Marlene Adelstein’s USA Today Bestselling debut novel, Sophie Last Seen, it is six years since the disappearance of ten-year-old Sophie from a shopping mall. Her mother is living in a complicated grief-induced, depression infused, self-destructive limbo as any sense of closure eludes her. Sophie’s mom is observed by her daughter’s best friend who carries her own secrets about that day.

As the novel opens, Sophie’s mother, Jesse, a lapsed artist, lives a life of near seclusion. Her husband has divorced her, remarried, and had another child while she remains stuck in her grief, crazily grasping and collecting ‘finds’, bits and pieces of discarded junk, that she’s certain are clues to her daughter’s whereabouts. Haunted by memories of the intense and difficult child whose obsession with birds filled her young life, Jesse clashes with Star, Sophie’s childhood best friend, now the teenage reminder of all she’s lost. When the two of them decipher a message from Sophie’s birding journal pointing to a whole new explanation for her disappearance, they set off together on a road trip in hopes of some kind of resolution.

With the help of a private detective who arrives in town in search of another missing girl, Jesse begins to forgive herself, accept her daughter for who she was and open up to the possibility of a new love.