Sometimes, starting over isn’t just about changing your address. It’s about rediscovering the parts of you that got buried under years of roles, routines, and responsibilities. In Finding Scarlet by Kirsten Pursell, we follow a woman who doesn’t just move across the country—she rediscovers herself, one mile, one memory, and one brave choice at a time.
After a quiet but deeply painful divorce, Scarlet leaves her long-time California home behind and heads toward the Carolina coast. What she finds isn’t just a new zip code—it’s a new sense of identity. And maybe, in a twist of fate or poetic design, she settles on Sullivan’s Island. The same name she once carried before becoming someone’s wife, someone’s mom, someone she no longer fully recognized.
The name “Scarlet” becomes more than just a character in a story. It becomes a reclamation. A return to the girl she used to be—the bold one, the dreamer, the artist, the woman who believed in her own magic before she gave it all away to be everything for everyone else.
And the place? Sullivan’s Island becomes her sanctuary. Not perfect, not always easy—but hers. A place where the ocean reminds her she’s still capable of movement, of change, of rebirth. A place where she doesn’t have to explain her past—only write her future.
In Finding Scarlet, Pursell weaves a tender and honest portrait of a woman who learns that finding yourself again isn’t about erasing your history. It’s about reclaiming the pieces that never stopped mattering. Sometimes, it starts with a name. Sometimes, it starts with a town that calls you home before you even arrive.
And sometimes, finding Scarlet means finding you.
