Books by Heather Joy

The Weight of Air

A Memoir of Trauma, Survival, and the Fight to Breathe Again

“Raw, powerful, and deeply resilient.”

“Emotional, riveting, and inspiring.”

“A life-changing reminder: you are not alone.”

The Weight of Air is Heather Joy’s debut memoir of resilience, survival, and self-forgiveness, told through the collision of professional and personal trauma during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a registered respiratory therapist working the front lines in a COVID hotspot, Heather lived inside the relentless pressure of failing lungs, impossible decisions, and the emotional whiplash the public never fully saw.

But there is a kind of suffocation no monitor can measure: the silence after trauma, the shame that lodges in the throat, the way the body remembers what the mind tries to outrun.

Heather writes with unflinching honesty about what it takes to heal, reclaim your voice, and move forward.

Coming 2027

The Lone Sailor

She waited thirty years for the truth to speak her name.

At twenty years old, Amy was proud to serve her country as a young sailor stationed in Norfolk, Virginia. She was independent for the first time in a city far from home. But on a cold night in February 1991, everything she trusted about the world collapsed. Anthony Favors broke into her apartment and an ordinary night became a life-altering act of violence that would shape the next three decades of her life.

Her rape kit was collected. Then it was shelved. Forgotten.

Amy carried the weight of that night alone—through the Navy, through motherhood, through every year that justice stayed silent. She learned to live with the ache of unanswered questions and the quiet terror of knowing her attacker had never been held accountable.

Thirty years later, Detective Brian Williams reopened her case as part of the national SAKI initiative. When he ran the DNA, the truth finally surfaced: the man who had stolen her safety in 1991 had gone on to harm others. The match cracked open the case.

The Lone Sailor is more than a true crime story, it is the testament to the strength of survivors everywhere and the reminder that no matter how much time has passed, the truth still matters, healing is possible, and every voice deserves to be heard.

Pink Mist

Pink Mist is the true story of a retired Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician whose six wartime deployments left marks no one could see. He spent years dismantling bombs, walking toward danger while everyone else ran from it, and carrying the weight of missions he could never speak about. But the most devastating explosions were the ones that happened inside him.

While his teammates were killed in action or lost to suicide, he kept going—out of duty, out of habit, out of the belief that he had to survive for the ones who didn’t. But survival came with a cost. The line between memory and nightmare blurred. Secret missions replayed in the dark. Sleep became a battlefield. Silence became deafening.

As his mental health unraveled, he fought to hold onto the relationships that tethered him to the world: family, friends, the people who loved him but couldn’t always understand the storms inside his head. He learned to escape to the few places where he could breathe—quiet corners, open spaces, moments where the noise finally softened enough for him to hear himself again.

Pink Mist is not a story of heroism. It is a story of aftermath—of what happens when the war ends but refuses to leave your body. It is a raw, unflinching look at trauma, loyalty, survivor’s guilt, and the fragile hope of finding peace after years of living in the blast radius. Through honesty and vulnerability, he reveals the truth so many veterans carry: sometimes the hardest battles are the ones fought at home.

Coming 2028

Coming 2027

The Code Between Us

Mac is trying to outrun her life. After her brother Kenny’s death shatters her family, she realizes she can’t survive by staying in Connecticut. Her mother’s drunken outburst at the funeral is the final fracture. With nothing left to anchor her, Mac packs up her world and flees to a small Alabama town, hoping distance will quiet the memories she can’t control.

It doesn’t.

The Magnolia Inn is supposed to be a fresh start, but the shadows Mac carries don’t stay buried. She’s quickly folded into the orbit of a quirky group of sisters that run the inn and whose warmth begins to soften her edges. But the night shift at the hospital where she’s assigned brings its own unease. Walking the halls alone, Mac can’t shake the feeling that something else is wandering them too — something she can’t name, something that watches.

Then she meets Matt. Handsome, gregarious, the hometown hero with a grief of his own after losing his father. The son of the matriarch of The Magnolia Inn. He’s the first person in years Mac feels safe enough to confide in. Their connection is immediate, unexpected, and grounding — a rare place where she can breathe.

Who can she trust? Her heart reaches for safety; her gut remembers every wound. Mac must decide if she can let her guard down, even for a moment, to see the truth she’s spent years protecting herself from.

But the hospital nights grow stranger. Patients begin coding at odd hours. Patterns emerge that shouldn’t exist. And as Mac and Matt work side by side, they’re forced to confront the possibility that something far more dangerous is unfolding in the darkness of Alabama’s bayous.