Beyond the Ripples

Memoirist Dede Montgomery has the uncanny ability to create the quality of presence inside story. This time, it's through her fiction. Whether at the Columbia River shoreline with a man struggling to gather up a bottle with a note inside or in a restaurant with a waitress witnessing a meeting that will change lives, we are there, moved by these characters, cheering them on and celebrating how interconnected we humans are. Beyond the Ripples will capture your heart."

—Jane Kirkpatrick, Award-winning author of Everything She Didn't Say."
How might a small decision you make, an action you take, a phone call you initiate change your path? Impact other lives? Months after spying a bottle wedged into a fallen cottonwood snag in the Columbia River, Ernest pulls it from the river. The bottle’s note connects Ernest, an old man living in a tiny Oregon town, to teenage Annie, provoking a mysterious and sudden friendship between Ernest’s daughter Amelia with Sarah, the daughter of the most recent resident of the home Annie once occupied. The two middle-aged women’s quest to learn more about Annie and her secret introduces readers to stories about family members through backstory, and introduces new characters, all connected through the finding of the bottle. Together, Amelia and Sarah explore their unfinished business with their mothers, intimate relationships, and regrets over life choices as they embark on their personal searches for something bigger in their very different lives.

Dede Montgomery is a sixth-generation Oregonian and the author of literary fiction, memoir, and narrative nonfiction. Her work blends personal narrative, historical reflection, and social awareness, often grounded in a deep sense of place—particularly the Pacific Northwest.

Drawing on more than forty years of experience in workplace safety, health, and well-being, Montgomery weaves themes of identity, family legacy, aging, and resilience into both her fiction and nonfiction. Her writing is thoughtful and introspective, often exploring the ways personal lives intersect with broader cultural and historical forces.

Her books include A Map of Her Own (October 2025), a dual-timeline novel of contemporary and historical fiction; From First Breath to Last: A Story About Love, Womanhood, and Aging (memoir, 2024); Humanity's Grace (a novel in stories, 2022); Then, Now, and In-Between: Place, Memories, and Loss in Oregon (nonfiction, 2020); Beyond the Ripples (literary fiction, 2019); and My Music Man (memoir, 2017).

Learn more about her, her books and blogs on her author page at dedemontgomery dot com.