Set in the 1980s, Tiny Little Earthquakes follows Elliot Hase, a sharp-witted, TV-addicted, young girl navigating a world of dysfunction, grief, and an eccentric family. Living on a horse farm in rural North Carolina with her mercurial mother, self-destructive, drug-addicted, older sister Poppy, and a revolving door of family ghosts, Elliot learns that survival often means finding humor amid heartbreak.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Tiny Little Earthquakes by Hays Blinckmann, which releases on February 17th 2026.
Elliot Hase is a sharp, observant nine-year-old girl growing up on a horse farm in 1980s North Carolina, where the adults are far less stable than the barn animals. Her mother, a charismatic alcoholic with a flair for drama and denial, careens through life in a haze of wine and self-pity. Her father, a distant doctor with a new family and a wife who rewrites history, offers more guilt than guidance. Caught between the two is Poppy—Elliot’s older sister, partner-in-crime, and cautionary tale—whose battles with addiction and self-destruction echo through Elliot’s own attempts to break the cycle.
As Elliot navigates funerals, failed interventions, AA and Al Anon meetings, and an elite boarding school that teaches more about co-dependency than calculus, she slowly begins to question not just the people raising her, but the identity she’s been forced to adopt to survive them. Her coming-of-age is shaped by secrets she didn’t ask for, betrayals she doesn’t deserve, and moments of brutal clarity that land like aftershocks.
The central conflict is Elliot’s internal struggle to define herself apart from the chaos of her family—trying to reconcile loyalty to her mother and sister with self-preservation, and survival with healing. Through humor, heartbreak, and sheer stubbornness, she learns that resilience isn’t about being unbreakable—it’s about breaking and rebuilding, again and again.
EXCERPT
Excerpted from Tiny Little Earthquakes, by Hays Blinckmann. 2026. Reprinted with permission.
When I heard, “JESUS!” I knew I was on the right channel. The Lord’s name being hollered at me marked the beginning of my Sunday mornings as a child. I wasn’t worshipping in a church, but at a different altar. The place where I exalted daily: my appropriately named Zenith television. We lived on a 70-acre horse farm in North Carolina, which offered little in traditional entertainment for a young girl in the early 80s. There were no playgrounds or neighborhood children within a 30-mile radius. It wasn’t just that I had no friends, but there were no friends to be had. So, “JESUS!” being shouted by the television wasn’t odd, given my lack of playtime alternatives.
I chose TV over any physical activity, and still do, if I’m honest. I was all limbs and tubby body dressed in my best “Night, Jon Boy” nightie—you know, the kind with a high collar and tiny flowers? On a good day, Mom would grab a comb and brush my thick blonde hair until my eyes watered. Then she would yank it into two neat sections and pull extra hard to secure the Goodie elastics and felt ribbon on pigtails. The part always hurt along the back of my scalp until about midday when it loosened. So that was me, on the day of the Lord, scrambling to the TV to watch the most underrated D-list celebrity of all time. His name was Ernest Angley (pronounced “ainj- lee”), and he was divinely entertaining. I couldn’t get enough of this sweaty, bloated man in his tan three-piece suit as spit wadded near the corners of his mouth. I would quickly fix a bacon and peanut butter sandwich and plant my face twelve inches from the Zenith’s screen just as every unholy child should.
My name is Elliot Hase. Yes, a girl named Elliot, but we’ll get to that later. The name Hase is Germanic, meaning hare or bunny. We weren’t German German, but a mixture of English, Irish, and German. Anyhoo, Hase also means someone who is quick or timid, and I think both apply.
Now, many of you may not be familiar with Reverend Ernest Angley—unless you experienced the joys of growing up in the South in the 80s. Ernest was born in North Carolina, and along with his wife, Esther, had a small but committed following on cable television. They were original TV evangelists, alongside Jim and Tammy Faye. But Ernest was on the bottom of the evangelical movement’s totem pole. Naysayers would claim he had a toupee, but toupee, smoopee, the Ernest Angley Hour was solid gold television. I was enraptured. No, I had not accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior, but I had pledged myself to Channel 6 for showing me a man who laid his sweaty palm on the faces of believers and shouted, “Amen!” (Actually, in his Southern twang, it was “AAAAAmen,” direct from the back of his throat.) Angley believed in miracles because he believed in God. His philosophies were relatively simple. He would lay his hands on an infirmed person and say, “In the name of Jesus, foul spirits come out. OUT!” If he were healing a partially deaf child, the child would say, “Jesus.” But it sounded more like a muted “Yeesus” because the partially deaf child was still actually partially deaf. It was life-changing.
“The angels are moving in…” Angley would reassure me, and I would relax. Thank God, because we need more angels, Ernest. Mr. Angley spoke directly to me, because I felt that the angels had distinctly abandoned me. My family was filled with foul spirits.
