Kohelette: A Novel came out this past Wednesday. I’m beyond thrilled!

Advance readers may have had the novel for a while already, but I’ve still relished sending it out into the world more broadly, first with a recent excerpt appearing in The Polk Street Review 2026 and now with this past week’s publication. There may be many accomplishment moments and stages of completion in bringing a novel to life, but publication day is a biggie. Rather than rushing on to next things, as I often do, I’ve been trying to pause with this feeling of satisfaction in something finished. And to enjoy sharing, of course.

Read on for a Kohelette excerpt below. And if you haven’t already, you can now order your copy of Kohelette!

Enjoy. 🙂

Callie

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“A story full of revelation, resonance, and heart!” 
–Dheepa R. Maturi, 
author of 108: an Eco-Thriller

She wants to do something new with her life, but she may need the dead to help her do it. 

When Kohelette (“Lettie”) loses her job, she needs a new way to support her family. She also needs to deal with her critical ex-spouse, Ian, who shows up after years of silence wanting to reconnect with their daughter. Emotional and financial pressures mount, and Lettie considers selling the family house, but the ghosts of relatives intervene. They keep reminding her about the family dream of opening a yarn shop in the front room, and she’s realizing she might want to make that dream her own. But will Lettie find a way to keep the house before losing more than she even knew she had?

Domestic fiction meets magical realism in this story of piecing together a life after loss.

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Kohelette: An Excerpt

Excerpted from Kohelette: A Novel
Clay Patin Press 2026
Copyright © 2026 by Callie J. Smith

Ground beef frying in onions sent the most amazing smell through the kitchen. My father made spaghetti almost every Saturday when I was growing up, and I loved it. Michael Wicherek was no cook, but he’d tell us how his own mother had made spaghetti every Saturday when he was a child, too. 

I took a deep breath. Why hadn’t I made time to do this more often? If I could keep from overcooking the meat, my spaghetti would taste as good as it smelled. 

I scooped a couple chunks of ground beef from the skillet and set them on a plate covered with a folded paper towel, letting the grease drain out. Then I cut a chunk of meat in half to make sure it had cooked all the way through. 

My daughter Jenn appeared magically beside me. She’d always known when to show up for samples. I gave her a fork, and we both speared a bit of meat, blew on it, and took a bite.

She chewed. Then she said “salt” as she left.

I added salt. Then stewed tomatoes, tomato paste, and everything else my father had used for his sauce. I put it all in and let it simmer. 

“I think your sauce smells better than mine,” said my father. He stood with his hand on the doorframe, leaning in as if he’d only paused in passing. He and my mother would have eaten hours ago.

“Want to join us?” I asked. 

“Naw, we’re fine.” He remained leaning against the doorframe, though, watching.

After a while, I asked, “Want to give Jenn a ten-minute warning?”

He shook his head. “She doesn’t listen to me anymore.”

I laughed. Jenn was twelve. “She doesn’t listen to anyone anymore.” I walked past him and half-way through the family room, yelling toward the front room, “Ten minutes!”

“Okay!” Jenn yelled back.

My father laughed and left. 

Jenn and I ate quietly but, I thought, happily. I told her I’d take care of the dishes, but I only sat there at the table long after she left, aware how warm and alive the room felt with all this use. I should have made spaghetti more often. As it was, I barely recognized myself sitting there in the warm kitchen and feeling almost happy.

When I heard Jenn dragging boxes down the stairs, it struck me she must have gotten out the Christmas decorations. After a while, I went to see. 

Blue foil garlands already twisted with greenery along the edge of the mantel. My mother’s nativity scene sat on the bricks of the fireplace ledge. An artificial tree, only partially decorated, stood in a far corner between the fireplace and picture window. Jenn had worked quickly.

“Looking good,” I said, infusing my voice with all the enthusiasm I could. We hadn’t decorated for the last couple of years. No one had been in the mood, I supposed. But now I wanted to support her interest in it. Darkness had already fallen across the front yard, so I went to close the blinds.  When I turned around again, Jenn gave me a stony expression, her mouth drawn into a little pout.

What had I done to deserve that? I glanced over at my mother, who sat snuggled up in an olive-green throw on the couch. She met my eyes and heard my silent question. She shrugged. My father, who’d just come in and was sitting down by my mother, clearly picked up on the tension. He rubbed his hands along the legs of his polyester pants – a nervous gesture – and glanced between the three females in the room. Clearly deciding to tune us out, he reached for his paper. 

Jenn was kneeling by a cardboard box on the floor. She looked back down and began pulling out tangled strands of lights. Undeterred, I went and lifted out a strand, as well, untwisting the knots. When Jenn tugged on the strand one too many times, I said, “Stop pulling.” 

“I didn’t ask for your help.” 

I glared at her and kept working. We went on in silence until I was standing on a chair by the tree, tucking a final strand of lights into the top branches. Jenn handed up a dull, bronze-gold star we’d found. I hadn’t recognized it, but we agreed that we liked it. I put it on top of the tree.

“Good?” I asked.

“Good,” Jenn said, but she was still frowning.

The expression had become habitual for her. It felt like a tug in my chest. I’d only lost my job a couple months ago, but I knew this sadness had been growing inside me far longer than that. Had the sadness been weighing on her, too? I didn’t know that her twelve-year-old psyche had the awareness or the willingness to tell me. 

Climbing down from the chair, I watched Jenn kneel again by one of the cardboard boxes. Instead of lifting out the ornaments I expected, she pulled out a knit vest in bright, cherry-red wool. I stared at it. A diamond pattern ran down either side of the vest’s front, and I could picture my mother wearing it. At some point, for some holiday, I could see myself standing beside my mother at the kitchen counter when she wore that vest. We were cutting dumplings and talking. We may have even laughed. 

“That was in a Christmas box?” I asked.

“No,” Jenn said. “Looks like a bunch of clothes. Brought down the wrong box.” Instead of dropping the vest back into the box, though, she held it up higher. “This was Grandma Lydia’s,” she said.

“It was,” I agreed. “I bet it would fit you.”

Jenn only stared at it. 

“I can wash it,” I offered. “It would look nice on you.” I glanced over at my mother, expecting to see some sort of pleasure in her face at the idea of Jenn wearing her vest, but her expression only registered concern. She was watching Jenn.

“Okay,” Jenn said. She sat down with the vest in her lap. “I miss them,” she said, clearly trying not to cry. 

“I do, too.” Something in me melted at the sight of her tears. Jenn’s tears had become as rare as her smiles. I sat down beside her again. “This is our second Christmas without Grandpa Michael, isn’t it?” I hadn’t thought of that until now. In some ways, it felt like Jenn had been playing cards with my father only yesterday. In other ways, it seemed like forever since his death. “And … I guess four Christmases now without Grandma Lydia.”

Jenn nodded. “I didn’t think you missed them,” she said, her voice unusually quiet.

“What?” 

“You don’t act like you miss them,” she said, louder this time, as if I were hard of hearing.

I held her eyes, too surprised to feel offended. “Sweetie,” I said before I could catch myself. Jenn had told me to stop calling her “Sweetie” a while ago. She’d also told me to stop trying to hug her all the time. She didn’t object now, though. “I guess I’ve only been crying when I’m alone,” I admitted, though I knew I hadn’t been crying much lately, and I suddenly wondered why that was. People cried when they grieved. A lot. “Maybe we should have been crying together,” I suggested.

Jenn shrugged and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her new turquoise sweater. “I can’t believe they’re gone.”

It was my turn to nod. I couldn’t believe it, either. 

“You said Grandpa Michael died from a broken heart,” she reminded me. “Do you think we’ll die now, too?”

My breath caught. It was true. I had said that. But should I have said that in front of her? How must that have sounded to a child? “No, Jenn, I don’t think we’ll die now. But I do miss them a lot.”

Glancing to the couch, I wondered how I could tell her that I saw my parents sitting there even now: my father in his polyester pants working a crossword puzzle, and my mother with a knitting project in her lap, watching us. She was giving me a sad smile even now. I knew my mother had worried about Jenn for years.

I sighed and turned back to my little girl who wasn’t so little anymore. She was still crying. I had to say something, didn’t I? Would it help to give her a chance to talk about them? “You always gave Grandpa Michael a run for his money at cards,” I tried.

She sniffed and nodded. “Grandma Lydia interrupted a lot. She kept wanting to teach me how to knit.”

I chuckled. Maybe Jenn did need a chance to talk about them. “That sounds like Grandma Lydia.” 

Jenn actually gave me a weak smile. “She used to take me shopping, too,” Jenn said and then paused. “She always tried to talk me out of what I wanted. But then she’d buy the stuff anyway.”

“She never understood my taste in clothes, either,” I said, glancing over to the couch in time to see “Grandma Lydia” roll her eyes at our conversation. “But maybe I should make time to go through some of these boxes. We might find some things we want to wear.”

“Yeah,” Jenn agreed. “Grandma Lydia always had Christmas sweaters.” 

I nodded. “I miss them a lot, Jenn. But I still see them all over the place, too.” I pointed at the couch, though I knew she didn’t see my parents the way I did. “Can’t you almost see Grandpa Michael over there working his crossword puzzle?” 

I noticed my mother watching for Jenn’s reaction. Even my father glanced up. But Jenn only glanced toward the couch for an instant before returning her eyes to the box in front of her. “I want to decorate for Christmas like Grandma Lydia did,” she said with another sniffle.

Part of me wanted Jenn to see them, as if I thought seeing them would make her feel better. But would it? Did seeing them make me feel any better?

“You’re well on your way,” was all I said, getting up on my knees and scooting over to another box. I pulled open the flaps and took out bulbs of metallic red and gold. Jenn joined me. Soon, we had ornaments hung on tree branches, spread along the mantel, and strewn across the bookshelves and side tables. When I stood and stepped back into the family room doorway, I saw a room that looked as Christmassy as it could get. 

“You did a good job,” I said, deciding not to press my luck any further by offering more help. “I’ll let you finish up.”

Jenn nodded. I walked to the kitchen, thoughtful. 

I vaguely remembered losing my grandparents, but it wasn’t that clear in my memory. It must have hurt. It hadn’t hit me like losing my parents, though. Maybe I’d thought of my grandparents as old people, and I’d known even as a child that old people died a lot. I’d missed them, I was sure, but I hadn’t found myself talking with them every day. Not the way I still talked with my parents. 

I hadn’t known life without my parents. Even now, after their deaths, I still couldn’t imagine life without them. I used to think that people who died were gone, but I didn’t believe that anymore. Not that I could have said exactly what I thought happened after people died. My parents had never seemed very talkative on that subject.

A gust of wind on the kitchen window brought my mind back to the present. I made hot cocoa in a travel mug. Then I put on my down coat and a pair of black mittens and slipped out the door to the patio.

The wind really had picked up. It smelled like snow again, as if another storm had turned in our direction. Sliding the patio door closed behind me, I leaned back against the stucco siding and took a sip of cocoa. I didn’t really taste it, though. My mind was losing itself in the darkness of the trees and in thinking how much had changed since the days when I’d sit outside every chance I got. 

We used to bring metal furniture out from the garage to arrange on the patio in nice weather. After my mother died, though, I’d stopped coming out here. I’d stopped doing a lot of things. I’d stopped bringing furniture out to the patio in warm weather only to put away again when the cold came. I’d stopped buying new clothes and hadn’t bothered to find a new dishwasher. Most of the “new” things we spent money on would only wear out or break again. Why waste the time and money? 

I’d stopped wanting things, chasing things, dealing with things. I’d just stopped. 

And now? 

The downspout on the other side of the door trembled with a gust of wind. Something fastening it to the side of the house probably needed to be fixed, and as the only person now taking care of the house, I didn’t want to deal with it. It was too much house for only one adult, but I felt afraid of moving. I couldn’t bear to lose anything else, even a house I didn’t know how to take care of.

I didn’t know if losing so much had made me feel like this or if I’d done it to myself. Clothes, furniture, malfunctioning dishwashers, kitchens smelling like spaghetti in the evening – what if all that was what bound us to life? What if, in neglecting those things, I was actually the one who’d died even though I was technically still alive?

I glanced back through the glass of the patio door. Jenn stood inside, still decorating the Christmas tree. She still cared about things. She still needed me even if she didn’t act like it. And she still seemed to think I was alive. 

I decided to believe her.

Keep reading! Grab your copy of Kohelette today!

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