When a man has brought his wife roses for the first time in thirty years, you’d think she would be happily surprised. You can’t imagine that she’d kick him out of the house… and then turn up dead on the toilet just hours later. But that’s what happened when Art McElroy brought his wife, Mae Rose, a dozen yellow roses.  

 

Mae Rose McElroy doesn’t really know her husband Art until she sees him from the other side (yes, that other side). She had looked at his face every day for thirty years, but never truly knew the man he was.Now she longs to go back and have a second chance to choose her happy ending. Funny thing is, Art feels the same way.  He didn’t know his wife at all until she died.

​

Most people accept their fate when a spouse dies. But not Art and especially not his determined wife, Mae Rose. She breaks every divine rule to come back, but confusion reigns.

​

A fun and irreverent story about bending the rules and fighting for a second chance, Vivian Probst’s debut novel, Death by Roses, tells the story of what happens to relationships after most of us think it’s too late.

​

Death, it turns out, is the best thing that ever happened to Mae Rose.

​

The judges at the When Words Count Retreat loved it—and awarded it the “Literary Trifecta,” selecting it from among one hundred entries.