Journalist by heart, marketing professional by day, and writer by moonlight, Jessica Barraco is a graduate of the University of Colorado, Boulder’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. She published her first newspaper article at nineteen years old, after which she wrote for Elite Daily, 944 magazine, and The Denver Post. She also spent three years working at HarperCollins Publishers across all of its imprints, working on both nonfiction and fiction books. A member of the Communications Committee of Girls Write Now, a NYC mentorship nonprofit, Barraco lives in New York City.

In 1999, as a twelve-year-old girl in sunny Southern California, Jessica Barraco loses her mother, Dianne, to cancer complications. Not knowing much about Dianne’s past, Jessica grows more and more curious about her mother’s story each year—especially because her immediate family does not seem to know much more about her mother than the Internet does. A decade after Dianne passes away, now armed with a journalism degree, Jessica unlocks a memory of her mother telling her that she loved her old ballroom dance partner, and she sets out on a two-year quest to find him—along with anyone else who can tell her about Dianne.

Part mystery, part coming-of-age story, The Butterfly Groove is a heart-warming exploration of how our pasts tell our truths, and how love survives all of us.