By: Reyna Marder Gentin
ISBN: 978-1645386209
Ten16 Press, 2025
2025 Sarton Finalist: Contemporary Fiction
For fans of Little Fires Everywhere and The Paper Palace comes a compelling novel about fractured family and long-buried truths.
Jessica Harmon has spent her life in an emotional tug-of-war-yearning for her mother's attention while bracing for the rejection that always followed.
At thirty, Jessica's love life is a wreck, her confidence is shot, and she's adrift in New York City, stuck editing other people's novels at a vanity press while too paralyzed to write her own. She blames her failure to launch on the woman who raised her: Cynthia Harmon, a legendary poet and scholar, who dazzles her students and readers alike...but leaves her only child cold.
When Cynthia wins yet another major literary award and asks her daughter to assist her on the book tour, Jessica decides to give their relationship one last chance. When a crisis upends Cynthia's triumphant moment, the power dynamic begins to shift between the two women, and cracks start to show in the story Jessica has always been told-about her mother, her family, and herself.
Jessica Harmon Has Stepped Away is a sharp, emotionally layered novel about mothers and daughters, long-held secrets, and understanding where we come from so we can choose who we become.
About the Author
Reyna Marder Gentin grew up in Great Neck, New York. She attended college and law school at Yale. For many years, she practiced as an appellate attorney with a public defender’s office before turning to writing full time. Reyna has studied at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, and her work has been published widely online and in print. Her debut novel, UNREASONABLE DOUBTS, was named a finalist for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association Star Award in 2019. Her middle grade novel, MY NAME IS LAYLA, came out in January, 2021 and will be re-released in February, 2026. School Library Journal noted that “Layla’\'s struggles at school and home are authentically depicted, and readers who face their own challenges will relate.” Layla won the 2021 gold medal in the Moonbeam Children’s Awards in pre-teen fiction. Reyna’s novel BOTH ARE TRUE was published in October, 2021. Nicola Krauss, co-author of THE NANNY DIARIES, called BOTH ARE TRUE a “moving novel that examines what it means to start over--with surprising consequences.” Reyna’s latest novel, JESSICA HARMON HAS STEPPED AWAY, was published in November, 2025, and has been named as a finalist for the 2025 Sarton Women’s Book Award. Kirkus called the novel “A rich, engrossing portrait of a mother and daughter fencing their way toward a truce.” Reyna lives with her family in Scarsdale, New York.
To learn more about Reyna Marder Gentin and her work, please see reynamardergentin.com
