Jennifer Murphy

Jennifer Murphy combines novel writing with visual art, often exploring identity through fractured family histories. Scarlet in Blue, published by Dutton in 2022, follows a mother and daughter moving through a succession of towns while concealing themselves under the names Scarlet and Blue. Set largely in the early 1960s and anchored in South Haven, Michigan, the psychological novel gradually reveals why their lives have been organized around departure, secrecy, and reinvention. Publisher material identifies Murphy as the author of I Love You More and connects her storytelling with her work as an artist. That visual practice suits a novel in which colour, portraiture, and the instability of appearances carry narrative weight. Reviews emphasize the shifting perceptions created by the mother-daughter relationship and the danger that shadows their journey. Scarlet in Blue therefore presents Murphy’s central interests in an especially concentrated form: art and memory become ways to examine love, fear, and the stories a family constructs to survive.