The Story That Wouldn’t Let Go: Song of Belonging by Michelle St. Romain
I have loved books and writing for as long as I can remember. Books have been my constant companion and I’ve been writing in many forms since elementary school. At the age of 50, after decades of work in the nonprofit field, I decided that it was time to finally listen to the whispers from my French Louisiana grandmothers and great-grandmothers and write the story they had been singing to me for decades. I grew up in the Southern part of Louisiana surrounded by a large Catholic family, including thirty first cousins, lots of aunts and uncles and grandparents, and one very special great-grandmother who lived long enough for me to know her. Her words and presence inspired Song of Belonging, my debut novel and the first in a trilogy about three sisters who grew up in New Orleans, each left to unravel a different secret from their French grandmothers.
I remember three things about my great-grandmother that have kept her firmly in my mind and heart all these years. First, she was a very small woman, and by the time I came along, she spent most of her time in a chair in a lovely room at the back of the home where she lived with my Great-Aunt Ursula, my grandmother’s sister. My Grandma Alice lived just across the street from them in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans. When we visited, we spent time with all of them.
The African violets lining the window of my great-grandmother’s back room were the second part of my memory of her that stays with me. They were beautiful, delicate things, and she tended them carefully. I have kept some of my own over the years and when they bloom, I always think it is because she is helping me.
The most important thing I remember about her, though, was her love of learning and her deep curiosity. She did not attend school long enough to learn to read past elementary school level, and when we visited, she always had a stack of newspapers and magazines that she had saved for my mom to read and explain to her.
I was transfixed by her eagerness to learn and her presence. When she looked at me, I felt like she could see right through me, and I felt a sense of place, community, and belonging in this family lineage. And I believe I felt slightly haunted, as though there were stories she could never tell me, but that lived deep in her memory.
The day my great-grandmother died, I was a few months short of turning seven. The day before her funeral my Aunt Ursula called my mother and asked her to send me over from my grandmother’s house. I walked over from across the street, uncertain why I was being called there. Aunt Ursula handed me a green jewelry box and said “Little Gram wanted you to have this. I don’t know why and she didn’t say any more, but she asked me to be sure to give it to you when she passed away.”
I wasn’t sure why I had been given this gift, but it helped with the unexplainable loss I felt. The jewelry box was empty, but when I opened it, I felt as though it was the container of many invisible and untold stories. I wondered about what it had held over the years, and what stories it could tell me if it could speak.
From that moment, I believe the story of Song of Belonging began.
The novel I wrote is completely fiction, beyond the moment of Alice, the main character, receiving the jewelry box. It is inspired by listening to my older family members talk and tell stories, and by my own experiences of living in such a wonderful community – the French Acadian world of South Louisiana. The culture I grew up in is very much alive, a community rich in history, traditions, great food, music, and connection that I wanted to capture in this story, with a focus on the matrilineal line of a fictional French family.
The story also weaves in my deep love of the natural world, particularly the oceans and rivers. Waterways shape towns and communities in Louisiana, and as a young adult I was fortunate enough to live in Hawai’i where the ocean is a gift beyond measure. I fell in love there with the monk seals and sea turtles, and now that I live in Southern Oregon, I have also fallen in love with otters – sea otters and river otters – and the story includes these amazing beings as characters and teachers in Song of Belonging.
This book is my love letter to the Earth and our ancestors. I hope it leaves readers with some of the questions that have moved through my mind since I was a young child: what are we to do with the stories of those who came before us and how are we to live in this changing world? For me, the answer has always been to turn to nature and to the wisdom of our individual cultures to find the answers. We all come from people who knew how to live in harmony with the Earth and other people. Even if we have to go far back into our histories to find it – the wisdom is there for us to find. I believe our ancestors are always speaking to us, always ready to share wisdom to help us find our way in this changing world. The invitation they offer is to listen to their whispers and follow what we hear.———————————————————————————————————————————
Michelle St. Romain has loved writing and stories since she could hold a pencil. She completed a fellowship for the Bookgardan women’s writing program and was a writer-in-residence at Craigardan in the Adirondacks in the fall of 2023. Co-author of two poetry collections, Promised Fruit and Water’s Edge, her debut novel, Song of Belonging, was released in April 2026 by She Writes Press with distribution by Simon and Schuster. She leads creative writing workshops for women and has taught English and creative writing to children and teens in California, Hawai’i, and Oregon. She holds a B.A. in English from Loyola University, New Orleans and an M.A. in English/ Creative Writing from California State University, Sacramento. Her work has been featured in the Poetry Phone Line Project of the Oregon Humanities, The Rapids literary magazine, The Stanford Challenge 2026 Anthology (Wild Poets Press), and on Jefferson Public Radio and Ashland Community Radio. Michelle lives in Southern Oregon with her wife, two spaniels, and a wise, aging cat. They are enjoying watching their three creative young adults launch into the world. www.michellestromain.com
SONG OF BELONGING
For fans of Kate Morton, Amy Harmon, and Sally Page comes a multigenerational novel infused with touches of magical realism about a woman’s journey to find her place in an uncertain world as she unravels her family’s legacy.
In 1934, a child’s death tears open a family and shakes the small town of Richarme, Louisiana. Recalling her grandmother’s hidden gifts that had been shut down decades earlier, Grace Paschal begins writing to her deceased daughter as she navigates grief and guilt for Lily’s death, which will haunt their French community for generations.
In 2019, Alice, Grace’s great-granddaughter, awakens in her apartment in Berkeley and opens a jewelry box given to her decades earlier upon Grace’s death. When she explores its contents, the lines between past and present fade. As she works to meet the demands of her career, her life turns upside-down when new and frequent memories that aren’t her own rise to the surface—memories that cause her to question everything about the life she has chosen.
A haunting and magical story of a family with hidden gifts and secrets, Song of Belonging follows Alice as she embarks on a journey to discover the truth about her ancestors and find her place in a lineage of women healers who protect the waters that surround their Louisiana home.
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Category: On Writing
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