After years of playing imaginary second fiddle to Isabella Carson, her fearless alter ego, Desdemona, decides she’s had enough. No longer content to live inside Izzy’s imagination as the bold, creative side of her personality, Desdemona longs to claim the dream Isabella quietly abandoned — becoming an artist of renown.
A chance encounter with a fallen star on a moonlit beach grants Desdemona the impossible: the chance to become a woman all her own. She flees Isabella’s sensible plans to marry and settle down and builds a wildly successful artistic life in the colorful Key West art scene, while Isabella chooses safety, responsibility… and a life that slowly drifts away from her deepest dreams.
Though separated by more than miles, the two women remain mysteriously connected through each other’s dreams. Isabella escapes into vivid visions of Desdemona’s bohemian freedom, while Desdemona is haunted by unsettling nightmares of domestic stagnation — driving her to paint late into the night to outrun sleep itself.
But Isabella’s story runs deeper than unfulfilled dreams.
As a child, she lost her father — the beloved chief of a small-town volunteer fire department — in the line of duty, a heroic loss that shattered her world and gave birth to Desdemona in the first place.
Years later, on the heels of a painful divorce and the collapse of her carefully curated life in New York City, Isabella returns to Collinsville with her young twins, unsure of what comes next — or who she is without the roles she’s been playing. There, she reconnects with Gideon Shepherd — the boy who once rescued her from a schoolyard bully and grew into a devoted volunteer firefighter, carrying forward the legacy of the man Isabella loved most.
Loss sends Desdemona home as well. When her beloved artistic mentor passes away, Desdemona leaves behind her wildly successful Key West art world and sweeps back into Collinsville, unapologetically bold, utterly impossible to ignore.
As past and present collide, Desdemona pursues Isabella’s forgotten dream of joining the volunteer fire department, empowering the women around her and reigniting a long-buried love that could change Isabella’s life forever.
Warm, whimsical, and emotionally rich, First Wish is an uplifting contemporary women’s fiction novel with a magical twist — a heartfelt story of healing after loss, rediscovering dreams, second chances in love, and small-town community. Perfect for readers who enjoy magical realism romance, inspirational women’s fiction, and stories about strong women finding themselves — and the bold, imaginative girl who may still be waiting, impossible to ignore.
J. Wolf Scott lives in the rural Midwest with her husband and two children, who indulge her habit of bringing her imaginary friends home with her. More of her work can be found at www.jwolfscott.com
