The Myth

Every folklorist knows the frustration: you’ve read the dusty grimoires, you’ve chased the "will-o’-the-wisps" through every bog in Europe, and yet, all you’ve found are stories everyone already knows. To Madame Bel Carmen, the hypothesis is clear—Fairies are real. They must be. But the proof is perpetually slipping through her fingers like mountain mist.

Out of options and desperate for a breakthrough, Bel Carmen has turned her sights toward a figure who is less a person and more a rumor: a reclusive scholar known only through a few obscure, brilliant writings. An academic ghost who has reportedly done the impossible—actually met the Fae.

Enter the "Academic Ghost": Holly Walters

At The Three Little Sisters, we are beyond thrilled to pull back the curtain on this mysterious figure. That "ghostly" scholar? She is none other than Holly Walters, and her real-life story is just as enchanting as the fiction she pens.

Holly didn't start in the mist-shrouded peaks; she hails from a small, rural town in Minnesota, where the woods are deep and the stories are longer. Today, she’s a cultural anthropologist with a PhD from Brandeis University, but her work takes her far from the ivory tower. She spends her days in the high Himalayas of Nepal, documenting "fossil folklores" and sacred stones.

But while her academic life is rooted in the geology of South Asia, her heart belongs to the dragons, unicorns, and fairy tales of her youth. It is this duality—the rigorous scientist and the lifelong dreamer—that makes her debut novel, The Way By, so undeniably potent.

To know Holly is to understand why she writes the "unseen" so well. Her life is a collection of delightful contradictions:

• The Archer: When she isn't at her desk, she’s perfecting her Medieval archery skills (presumably in case those dragons ever show up).

• The Resident of Boston: She shares a home with an unruly garden, a clever spouse, a few cantankerous pets, and—fittingly—a resident house ghost.

• The Eccentric: She is a theorist of movie plots, a collector of "creepy sculptures," and a professional at forgetting exactly where she left her tea cup.

The Folklore of the North and the East

In her fiction, Holly weaves a "Golden Thread" between the mythologies she’s lived and those she’s studied. There is a punchy, personal energy to her writing that feels like a bridge between Vedic India and the Nordic North.

Just as Madame Bel Carmen suspects, the "Fae" aren't just a European phenomenon. Whether they are the Yakshas of the East or the Huldufólk of the North, Holly shows us that these entities are part of a global, living landscape. Her writing reminds us that the line between a "stone" and a "body," or a "myth" and a "memory," is much thinner than we think.

Why "The Way By" is Your Next Great Discovery

If you, like Madame Bel Carmen, are tired of the "same old lore," you need Holly’s voice. She brings the grit of a Himalayan trek and the soul of a Midwestern storyteller to every page.

The Way By isn't just a book—it’s the evidence Bel Carmen has been searching for. It’s a testament to the fact that the world is still enchanted, provided you have the right guide to show you the path.

Grab your copy, find your tea cup, and prepare to meet the Fae.