Some buildings shelter us. Others remember us.
Built from adobe, pine, and whispered memory, Balcony One is no ordinary restaurant. On the red edge of Virgin, Utah-just before the gates of Zion-it stands like a reliquary in the desert. Low and wide, with arches that breathe and roses that bloom out of season, the building keeps its own kind of time. It remembers. It listens. And it watches.
Told in eighteen luminous scrolls, Balcony One is a novel rooted in magical realism, psychological resonance, and sacred place-making. This is not a story told in chapters-but in spaces. Rooms. Thresholds. Each scroll unfolds like a breath, drawing the reader deeper into a structure that is mythic and tactile, haunted and holy.
At the center is Elizabeth, a bartender who sees more than she says. As memory rises from the floorboards, water glasses fill themselves for guests no longer alive. Mirrors refuse to reflect. Elizabeth begins to feel the pull of a presence-Sophia, who may be gone... or may have been pulled back.
Alongside her move Rosa and Brooke, the chef's fire-hearted daughters; George, the Greek owner who believes the building chose him; and Cynthia, whose art carries unspoken secrets. Scroll by scroll, the story winds through the Sunroom, the Stage, the Zitting Room, and beyond-each space layered with grief, ritual, and the quiet weight of memory.
Inspired by the real-life Balcony One Restaurant-Bourbon & Blues Bar in Virgin, Utah-and dedicated to the hands who built it-this novel is both a love letter and a ghost story. It asks what it means to carry grief in the bones of a place, how we leave traces of ourselves in what we build, and what it feels like to be truly seen by a space that remembers.
Balcony One is a deeply atmospheric novel of literary fiction, ideal for readers drawn to the mystical in the everyday and the liminal beauty of haunted architecture.
