… at eighteen nothing, nothing could satisfy her. She had not yet felt happiness well from her own heart, but had to seek it in vain everywhere, in the hot sun flashing over concrete, where it lived in deep pools of water in the woods, and existed in other people’s eyes. Her longing at eighteen knew no bounds; she was secretive and lonely, dark and insatiable.
Rebecca’s friendship with Alluvia grows into an intense sexual relationship—complicated by her secret affair with Francis, Alluvia’s husband. Rebecca’s desire for both members of the estranged couple leads to a surprising culmination she could never have imagined.
Jessy Reine’s THE SECRET OF GERANIUMS is a haunting and poetic short novel— a raw exploration of female sexuality.
“… written with Nin-esque eloquence, electric and breathless, delineating a dreamy, moony, earthy connection between physical ritual and sex. This short novel/novella brims with evocative imagery and a raw complexity of emotions; as Rebecca maps out her corporeal and erotic existence, the languorous memories and present moments alike are intertangled and suffused with a mid-coital glow.” — Elna Holst, author of Lucas
Jessy Reine was born on a dark and stormy dawn in November, 1986.She began writing stories at the age of seven. In 2014 she was awarded a grant from Arts by the People to create a small press with which she self-published and hand-bound 75 copies of a novella entitled, “Diary of the Seduced.” She has published short stories with Wilderness Literary Review, Blaze VOX, and the Quiet American, and was a finalist for the Tartt First Fiction Award in 2018. She has a BA in Narrative Fiction from Gallatin at NYU, as well as a Masters in Painting from the NY Academy of Art. She lives in a yurt in the Hudson Valley with her two children where she gardens by the moon and makes medicine from wild plants.
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