Welcome to the Jetty Cat Palace Café where synchronicity and wonder abound!
Morgen, a quirky music teacher and pianist, is devastated
when she learns that her mother, also a concert pianist, became pregnant with her after a sexual assault and abandoned her life as a performer.
Startled when a steel string explodes inside her piano, Morgen sees secrets long buried inside the music she and her late mother had cherished. Risking her career and heartbreak to rectify her mother’s lost dreams, Morgen vows to find her mother’s stolen cremation urn and track down her mystery father.
Following an irresistible melody that resonates from her family’s obscure past, she arrives at the Jetty Cat Palace Café where she finds offbeat locals, feral cats, and even a ghost. But a secret lies in wait for Morgen beneath the café’s scarred wood floor, and though she hopes that a bittersweet spiritual connection will resolve her shared history with her mother, she must first reconcile her past and present.
“A stolen urn sparks a daring adventure for one autistic young woman, and winds up delivering a masterpiece debut novel by a very promising rising star.
In Jetty Cat Palace Café, Judy Keeslar Santamaria’s often lyrical, meticulous writing, engaging characters, vivid imagery, and intricate plot work together to create a winner. Highly recommended!”-Chanticleer Reviews ★★★★★
Since 2011, Chanticleer Reviews has sponsored an International Book Award (CIBA) competition to recognize the best books published and to help those authors achieve the recognition they deserve.
In 2021, Jetty Cat Palace Café won 1st place in CIBA's Somerset Award for Women's Fiction.
Quite an accomplishment for a debut novel!
Interview of Judy about her novel Jetty Cat Palace Café conducted by Sean Dwyer during the virtual Chanticleer Authors Conference 2020