Rachel Wifall is a writer, vocalist, and professor of English literature at Saint Peter's University. A Long Island native, she currently resides in Jersey City, with her three beloved cats. 

Fiction

Also by Rachel Wifall:

Typewriter Man: Tales of WW2

In 1944, as Brooklyn native George Anton serves his country in England, detonating bombs, the top brass realizes he possesses another skill which they need even more: typewriter repair. He is sent to Paris, a city rollicking after its liberation from German occupation, to assist the diplomatic and intelligence corps with their communication needs. In the meantime, he befriends translator Sophie Bellamy, and together they discover a plot which may undermine Allied efforts to conquer Hitler's forces. Other stories in this volume follow Thaman, a Nepalese Ghurka warrior and his carrier pigeon; Cliff, who is taken from his small world in Baltimore and his resourceful young wife Lizzie and transported across the world to Papua New Guinea; haunted Royal Air Force pilot Edward Heatherton, and more.

The above song, a cover of Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz's 1949 "Haunted Heart," is a companion to the story of the same name. On the recording, Wifall is accompanied by collaborative pianist Taisiya Pushkar.

What You Need: A Trilogy

Three tales of service and love...in varied forms.

Haunted Heart

Although Edward Heatherton, an Oxford graduate from southwestern England, has grown up enjoying every possible privilege, he lacks the love he desires. After he volunteers to fly with the Royal Air Force in World War II, he realizes that he may be incapable of such intimacy.

Stairways

Fergus McNamara came from Ireland to Hollywood, to pursue a career in acting. Four years later, he lives in Queens, New York with his wife and two children, and works as a house manager for multi-millionaire investor Abe Goldman, whose Manhattan residence spans a city block. Goldman employs a staff the size of a small army, which takes care of the minutiae of his business and his daily life—from tracking the values of his stocks to purchasing his toothpaste. His wife Julia, a former actress-turned dilettante, also keeps the help busy with her many needs and desires—and her changeable moods. Life is quite stressful for Fergus and his coworkers in this contemporary Upstairs Downstairs, until the despotic Mr. Goldman suffers an accident and is no longer in complete control of anything. 

 What You Need (Ce dont vous avez besoin)

Mary is a thirty-two year old who cannot seem to “get it together.” Her life is a bundle of contradictions: she lives alone in a tiny apartment in an idyllic setting—overlooking a harbor on the North Shore of Long Island—but she’s surrounded by disruptive and frustrating neighbors. She holds multiple graduate degrees, but makes ends meet, barely, waitressing alongside a cast of colorful characters at a local bistro and tutoring the children of wealthy families on the side. She dates eligible men (and sometimes not-so-eligible men), but can never seem to find one who "sticks." When her confrontational neighbor Mark—an artist with a life even more complicated than hers—is mysteriously murdered one night, Mary assumes it is his past coming to haunt him. However, she soon finds that Mark’s demise has more to do with her life than she could guess.

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