AUTHOR
PRESS KIT
MIMI AND MAURICE
Mimi and Maurice
full-length book description
{ 181 words }
Between San Francisco and Belgian Congo, between war and silence . . .
It is 1936. Mimi lives in San Francisco, in a house she shares with her father and sister, writing letters to Maurice—a distant cousin she has never met. Maurice is in Belgian Congo, settling the estates of Europeans who die far from home. They have no shared memories, only paper, ink, and the weeks it takes a letter to arrive.
They write. For years. Three hundred and eighty-two letters survive.
Between us, an ocean, two continents, and the stubborn mathematics of distance. Marry me, Mimi. It’s all I want.
They become engaged and are set to meet in Belgium in May of 1940. Then the war comes. Maurice vanishes into the Resistance—imprisoned, interrogated, forced into an irrevocable choice. At home, Mimi endures years of silence and uncertainty, learning photography—Maurice’s great passion—to see the world through his eyes while waiting for letters that never arrive.
Drawn from their real correspondence, Mimi and Maurice is the story of a love written in full—and of what survives the silence.
Mimi and Maurice
short book description
{ 111 words }
It is 1936. Mimi lives in San Francisco, in a house she shares with her father and sister, writing letters to Maurice—a distant cousin in Belgian Congo she has never met. They have no shared memories, only paper, ink, and the weeks it takes a letter to arrive.
They write for years and become engaged. But when the war comes, Maurice vanishes into the Resistance—imprisoned, interrogated, forced into an irrevocable choice. At home, Mimi endures years of silence and uncertainty, waiting for letters that never arrive.
Drawn from their real correspondence, Mimi and Maurice is the story of a love written in full—and of what survives the silence.
Mimi and Maurice
tagline
{ 32 words }
Spanning 1936 to 1947, Mimi and Maurice is an intimate historical novel that explores love, resilience, war, family obligation, and the painful beauty of lives forever shaped by timing, distance, and hope.
Jo Taylor
full-length bio
{ 163 words }
Jo Taylor writes intimate, lyrical novels about women whose quiet lives hold extraordinary emotional truths. Her stories are grounded in the particular light of the Gulf Coast and the long memory of the American South—and in a deep tenderness for what ordinary moments carry.
She spent twenty-five years as an ER nurse before finishing a degree in English and discovering, somewhat to her own surprise, that she loved to write. She has lived aboard a boat, traced her genealogy to the year 310, and married a man whose character she has been stealing for her fiction ever since.
Her poetry and short stories appear in various literary journals. Postcards: Collected Poems and Short Stories was published in 2024. Her debut novel, Margaret of Thibodaux, was released in March 2025. Her second novel, Mimi and Maurice—which moves beyond the South to San Franciso, Belgium, and the Belgian Congo—is forthcoming in September 2026. Road Clothes, her third novel, is expected in 2027.
Jo Taylor
short bio
{ 45 words }
Jo Taylor is a retired ER nurse turned novelist whose lyrical fiction explores the hidden emotional lives of women. Her debut novel, Margaret of Thibodaux, was released in March 2025. She lives on the Gulf Coast of Alabama, where the past is never far. www.jotaylorauthor.com
MARGARET OF THIBODAUX
Margaret of Thibodaux
full-length book description
{ 205 words }
It is 1974, the last carefree, sultry Louisiana summer before high school begins when Margaret Thibodeaux’s world collapses: her daddy asks hometown doctor Muriel to marry him. It's been six years since her mama mysteriously died, and Margaret is convinced that the closer Muriel gets, the less she'll receive bedside visits from her mother—and the more she will fade from their lives.
Set on rejecting Muriel’s kindnesses, Margaret grapples with everyone’s delight over the engagement, including her two best friends, Honey and Robert, who think Muriel is nothing short of an angel. But when Margaret visits her mama’s grave for the first time and finds a poem left there—not in her daddy’s handwriting—the mystery of her mother’s death escalates. It isn't until she befriends the local recluse, Jezebel, who has spiritual gifts akin to her own, that Margaret begins to unravel her assumptions, reconcile her grief, and discover a shocking revelation about her mama from across the veil.
At once humorous and heartbreaking, Margaret of Thibodaux is a captivating Southern story of longing and self-discovery, told from the perspective of a feisty and determined yet vulnerable teenage girl as she learns that love and nurturing can come in the most unexpected packages.
Margaret of Thibodaux
short book description
{ 107 words }
Self-focused and emotional 14-year-old Margaret can't imagine her deceased mama being erased from their home for good―or how her daddy could replace her with another woman. It will take coming to terms with her own humility and accountability as surprising truths come to light, and as unexpected events show her that life, and what she holds dear, can change in an instant.
At once humorous and heartbreaking, Margaret of Thibodaux is a captivating Southern story of longing and self-discovery, told from the perspective of a feisty and determined yet vulnerable teenage girl as she learns that love and nurturing can come in the most unexpected packages.
Margaret of Thibodaux
tagline
{ 29 words }
A captivating Southern story of longing and self-discovery, told from the perspective of a feisty and determined yet vulnerable teenage girl as she learns that love and nurturing can come in the most unexpected packages.
Jo Taylor
full-length bio
{ 150 words }
Jo Taylor writes intimate, lyrical novels about women whose quiet lives hold extraordinary emotional truths. Her stories are grounded in the particular light of the Gulf Coast and the long memory of the American South—and in a deep tenderness for what ordinary moments carry.
She spent twenty-five years as an ER nurse before finishing a degree in English and discovering, somewhat to her own surprise, that she loved to write. She has lived aboard a boat, traced her genealogy to the year 310, and married a man whose character she has been stealing for her fiction ever since.
Her poetry and short stories appear in various literary journals. Postcards: Collected Poems and Short Stories was published in 2024. Her debut novel, Margaret of Thibodaux, was released in March 2025. Her second novel, Mimi and Maurice, is forthcoming in September 2026. Road Clothes, her third novel, is expected in 2027.
Jo Taylor
short bio
{ 45 words }
Jo Taylor is a retired ER nurse turned novelist whose lyrical fiction explores the hidden emotional lives of women. Her debut novel, Margaret of Thibodaux, was released in March 2025. She lives on the Gulf Coast of Alabama, where the past is never far. www.jotaylorauthor.com
POSTCARDS
Postcards
full-length book description
{ 199 words }
Faith, or lack thereof. Love, or something like it. Death in the world of medicine. The impact of childhood memories.
In this universal yet intimate collection, Jo Taylor applies her skilled and gentle hand to pen deeply lyrical verses, offering poignant observations of everything from relationships that weren’t meant to be, to sentiments on the meaning of faith, from an ode to a cherished baseball glove, to her years navigating life, death, and grief as an ER nurse. In her short stories, we are inspired by a blind artist, touched by a serendipitous pocket angel; our emotions are tapped as an elderly woman embraces her mortality, as a husband grapples with the eternal resting place of his young wife’s ashes. Filled with the tender wisdom of a writer who has experienced the fragility of life, each installment in this collection is visceral and stirring, provoking questions and honest reflection through the author’s candid yet compassionate lens.
Symmetry is beauty
found in flower, nautilus, and human face . . .
Beauty is in the familiar and the divine,
So, too, we find in faces the match to self or God.
And, so too, such beauty sparks thoughtful interpretation on every page of Postcards.
Postcards
short book description
{ 98 words }
In this universal yet intimate collection, Jo Taylor applies her skilled and gentle hand to pen deeply lyrical verses and compelling short stories, offering poignant observations of everything from relationships that weren’t meant to be, to sentiments on the meaning of faith, from an ode to a cherished baseball glove, to her years navigating life, death, and grief as an ER nurse.
Filled with the tender wisdom of a writer who has experienced the fragility of life, each installment in this collection is visceral and stirring, provoking questions and honest reflection through the author’s candid yet compassionate lens.
Postcards
tagline
{ 22 words }
Observational poetry harmonizes with slice-of-life short stories in this captivating collection that provokes questions and honest reflection through the author’s candid yet compassionate lens.
Jo Taylor
full-length bio
{ 150 words }
Jo Taylor writes intimate, lyrical novels about women whose quiet lives hold extraordinary emotional truths. Her stories are grounded in the particular light of the Gulf Coast and the long memory of the American South—and in a deep tenderness for what ordinary moments carry.
She spent twenty-five years as an ER nurse before finishing a degree in English and discovering, somewhat to her own surprise, that she loved to write. She has lived aboard a boat, traced her genealogy to the year 310, and married a man whose character she has been stealing for her fiction ever since.
Her poetry and short stories appear in various literary journals. Postcards: Collected Poems and Short Stories was published in 2024. Her debut novel, Margaret of Thibodaux, was released in March 2025. Her second novel, Mimi and Maurice, is forthcoming in September 2026. Road Clothes, her third novel, is expected in 2027.
Jo Taylor
short bio
{ 45 words }
Jo Taylor is a retired ER nurse turned novelist whose lyrical fiction explores the hidden emotional lives of women. Her debut novel, Margaret of Thibodaux, was released in March 2025. She lives on the Gulf Coast of Alabama, where the past is never far. www.jotaylorauthor.com