The Light We Leave Behind

The Light We Leave Behind
By Philip Stengel

A grief-soaked town. A haunted trunk. A daughter who paints what should stay buried.

After her mother's tragic death, Isabel Reyes retreats to the cliffs of Marrow Bay, where sorrow hangs thick in the mist and time moves with the tide. In her isolation, she discovers an impossible gift-when she paints the lost, they return. A dog. A drowned brother. The taste of a dead woman's bread. Each miracle is paid for with something from Isabel's own past-a name, a laugh, a memory she'll never recover.

As her fame spreads through the town's whispered awe, a deeper obsession takes hold: to bring her mother back. But the sea-soaked trunk in her studio holds more than relics-it holds power. And when she finally dares to unlock it, the line between memory, magic, and madness begins to dissolve.

Part gothic fable, part meditation on loss, The Light We Leave Behind is a lyrical, psychological ghost story about the price of grief, the hunger for connection, and the art of letting go.