Turquoise Trail Trilogy
Tagline: Family binds us. Friendship tests us. Truth frees us.
Turquoise Trail Trilogy fiction series by Chelse Russell-Benham
Turquoise Trail Trilogy: From family to friendship to freedom — three novels explore the delicate and durable bonds that shape a woman’s life. The bonds of mothers, daughters, and sisters bound by blood, if not by choice, and the friendships they make are woven together in the Turquoise Trail Trilogy. The series examines how women connect across generations and with each other, and follows them at different stages of reckoning — each forced to confront the stories they’ve told themselves about love, loyalty, and truth. From disco music to psychedelic trips, from book club gossip to friends for life, from personal power to raw confessions, the series asks how women learn to listen and really see one another — through music, stories, and, at last, their own unfiltered voices.
Series Overview: family → friendship → freedom
The Turquoise Trail Trilogy follows four generations of women bound by secrets, tested by love, and remade by resilience.
- In Book One: Annette and Olivette, a shattered suburban mother flees to New Mexico, where a raucous road trip with her bohemian sister ends in psychedelic revelations and a devastating truth. → “The road hums beneath me.”
- In Book Two: The BIVV, Annette seeks belonging in an Austin book club, only to find that gossip and superficial ties threaten to consume her. She must choose between fitting in or risk exclusion by seeking an authentic connection. → “The room hums around us.”
- In Book Three: Twigs, Tealeaf, and Tripshine, the spotlight shifts to Annette’s daughter, Quinn, who faces a personal crisis, family secrets, and her parents’ divorce. As three generations circle each other with laughter, irreverence, and raw honesty, they must decide whether love can finally break the cycles of silence and shame that shaped them. → “The truth hums between us.”
Each book stands alone, but together they create an interwoven portrait of contemporary womanhood. Together, the novels explore how women connect — through humor, music, stories, and raw emotions — and ask whether love, in its fiercest forms, can overcome deceptions or only deepen them.
Annette and Olivette by Chelse Russell-Benham
Book One: Annette and Olivette → family & secrets
Subtitle/Tagline: When life unravels, the road to redemption may lead to ruin.
Pitch: Welcome to Annette and Olivette, a novel that traces the fault lines of family, secrecy, and redemption along New Mexico’s storied Turquoise Trail.
Synopsis: Annette flees her fractured life — a marriage in ruins, a daughter estranged, a career in freefall — and reunites with her bohemian sister Olivette for a road trip that is part disco-fueled joyride, and part reckoning with ghosts. Alongside Olivette’s friend Windsong, the three women laugh, spar, and stumble their way through ghost towns, roadside bars, and a psychedelic journey that will change them forever.
NOTE: To deepen the experience, each chapter is framed by a song that foreshadows or resonates with its events. These are gathered into The Turquoise Trail Playlist — a soundtrack you can play while reading, or while your club gathers to discuss the novel. So pour the wine, turn up the volume, and follow the trail. A story you can read, a journey you can hear.
Hook: 🎶 Music Playlist
Structure:
Theme: Family secrets and betrayal.
TOC Texture: Cultural references: Thelma & Louise, Country Club Snub, WASP Rules, Set & Setting. Road-trip playlist featuring → Donna Summer, Sister Sledge, The Doors, Talking Heads.
Bookend: Prologue/Epilogue = door/wind metaphor + “soundtrack to the Turquoise Trail.”
Subtitle/Tagline: When life unravels, the road to redemption may lead to ruin.
Pitch: Welcome to Annette and Olivette, a novel that traces the fault lines of family, secrecy, and redemption along New Mexico’s storied Turquoise Trail.
Synopsis: Annette flees her fractured life — a marriage in ruins, a daughter estranged, a career in freefall — and reunites with her bohemian sister Olivette for a road trip that is part disco-fueled joyride, and part reckoning with ghosts. Alongside Olivette’s friend Windsong, the three women laugh, spar, and stumble their way through ghost towns, roadside bars, and a psychedelic journey that will change them forever.
NOTE: To deepen the experience, each chapter is framed by a song that foreshadows or resonates with its events. These are gathered into The Turquoise Trail Playlist — a soundtrack you can play while reading, or while your club gathers to discuss the novel. So pour the wine, turn up the volume, and follow the trail. A story you can read, a journey you can hear.
Hook: 🎶 Music Playlist
Structure:
Theme: Family secrets and betrayal.
TOC Texture: Cultural references: Thelma & Louise, Country Club Snub, WASP Rules, Set & Setting. Road-trip playlist featuring → Donna Summer, Sister Sledge, The Doors, Talking Heads.
Bookend: Prologue/Epilogue = door/wind metaphor + “soundtrack to the Turquoise Trail.”
The BIVV by Chelse Russell-Benham
Book Two: The BIVV → friendship & belonging (Centers on superficial vs. genuine friendships)
Subtitle/Tagline: What defines true friends — the size of the circle, or those who stand inside it when things get tough?
Synopsis: In Austin, Annette Reinhardt joins The BIVV, a book and movie club that begins with the toast "Biblio, Imago, Vino, Viragos!" At first, it feels like belonging: laughter, wine, and a circle of women to call her own. But the books soon fade into the background, replaced by gossip, shifting alliances, and secrets tucked inside half-spoken jokes.
As fissures widen, Annette must decide: stay in the glittering orbit of shallow friendships, or risk exclusion in pursuit of something deeper. With humor, warmth, and razor-sharp insight, The BIVV explores the tension between paper-thin friendships and genuine gal pals — and asks what matters more: the size of the circle, or the depth of the bond.
Hook: 📚📽️ Books & Movies
Structure: Each chapter is titled after a book/film “on the club’s list.”
Theme: Belonging vs. exclusion; authenticity vs. superficiality; catty vs. kind.
TOC Texture: Cultural references → The Hours, Mean Girls, The Change.
Bookend: Opening toast/Annette’s trusted and true inner circle.
Subtitle/Tagline: What defines true friends — the size of the circle, or those who stand inside it when things get tough?
Synopsis: In Austin, Annette Reinhardt joins The BIVV, a book and movie club that begins with the toast "Biblio, Imago, Vino, Viragos!" At first, it feels like belonging: laughter, wine, and a circle of women to call her own. But the books soon fade into the background, replaced by gossip, shifting alliances, and secrets tucked inside half-spoken jokes.
As fissures widen, Annette must decide: stay in the glittering orbit of shallow friendships, or risk exclusion in pursuit of something deeper. With humor, warmth, and razor-sharp insight, The BIVV explores the tension between paper-thin friendships and genuine gal pals — and asks what matters more: the size of the circle, or the depth of the bond.
Hook: 📚📽️ Books & Movies
Structure: Each chapter is titled after a book/film “on the club’s list.”
Theme: Belonging vs. exclusion; authenticity vs. superficiality; catty vs. kind.
TOC Texture: Cultural references → The Hours, Mean Girls, The Change.
Bookend: Opening toast/Annette’s trusted and true inner circle.
Twiggs, Tealeaf, and TripShine by Chelse Russell-Benham
Book Three: Twigs, Tealeaf, and Tripshine → multigenerational dynamics, women and the wider society (Centers on mother–daughter dynamics, push–pull tension of society's expectations, and the demands on women to shoulder more while putting themselves last.)
Subtitle/Tagline: Motherhood binds, breaks, and remakes us — in ways only daughters can truly understand.
Synopsis: In the trilogy’s final installment, Windsong, Olivette, and Annette — better known by their funny sobriquets Twigs, Tealeaf, and Tripshine — once again reunite to face the raw emotional, comical, and stressful moments of motherhood and daughterhood. In the book, Annette’s daughter Quinn takes center stage, coming to terms with her family’s history, her parents’ divorce, and a secret of her own. The novel examines the push-and-pull between generations of women raising women by blending laughter, irreverence, and the hardships of being a woman in today’s polarized climate.
Told with restraint and piercing insight, the novel examines how silence passes from one generation to the next — and whether trust, once broken, can be repaired in time to shape the future.
Hook: 🎧📱 Digital Media (Podcasts & Group Chats)
Structure: Chapters alternate between podcast epigraphs and “Fam(ish)” group chats.
Theme: Generational communication, listening vs. silence, Crisis in Generation Z women.
TOC Texture: Invented podcast snippets + chat banter → intergenerational friction + humor.
Bookend: Quinn’s private thoughts → Family Morgan podcast.
Subtitle/Tagline: Motherhood binds, breaks, and remakes us — in ways only daughters can truly understand.
Synopsis: In the trilogy’s final installment, Windsong, Olivette, and Annette — better known by their funny sobriquets Twigs, Tealeaf, and Tripshine — once again reunite to face the raw emotional, comical, and stressful moments of motherhood and daughterhood. In the book, Annette’s daughter Quinn takes center stage, coming to terms with her family’s history, her parents’ divorce, and a secret of her own. The novel examines the push-and-pull between generations of women raising women by blending laughter, irreverence, and the hardships of being a woman in today’s polarized climate.
Told with restraint and piercing insight, the novel examines how silence passes from one generation to the next — and whether trust, once broken, can be repaired in time to shape the future.
Hook: 🎧📱 Digital Media (Podcasts & Group Chats)
Structure: Chapters alternate between podcast epigraphs and “Fam(ish)” group chats.
Theme: Generational communication, listening vs. silence, Crisis in Generation Z women.
TOC Texture: Invented podcast snippets + chat banter → intergenerational friction + humor.
Bookend: Quinn’s private thoughts → Family Morgan podcast.
Series Frame: The Turquoise Trail Trilogy follows women at different stages of reckoning — each forced to confront the stories they’ve told themselves about love, loyalty, and truth.
Bridging the complexities of mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends, the Turquoise Trail Trilogy explores how women connect across generations and with one another. From disco road trips to book club gossip to the raw confessions, the series asks how women learn to listen to one another — through music, stories, and, at last, their own unfiltered voices.
Bridging the complexities of mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends, the Turquoise Trail Trilogy explores how women connect across generations and with one another. From disco road trips to book club gossip to the raw confessions, the series asks how women learn to listen to one another — through music, stories, and, at last, their own unfiltered voices.
