People magazine praises Sandra K. Griffith’s debut novel and says the Kenova native is poised to hit the literary scene in a big way.
By Anna Rollins
HQ 134 | SUMMER 2026
Kenova native Sandra K. Griffith was born to be a novelist. She knew it as a teenager.
“You know how people always say things like your hair color should be what it was when you were 2 years old, because that’s what you look best with, and you should always do career-wise what you thought you wanted to do when you graduated high school?” she said. “Well, I wanted to be a psychologist — and I also wanted to write.”
Griffith has spent most of her adult life in the field of psychology. She owns a large behavioral health agency and is an adjunct professor at Marshall University. Now, with the publication of her debut novel One Beautiful Year of Normal, she’s fulfilled her high school dream of becoming a writer, too. In March, One Beautiful Year of Normal was named one of People magazine’s “buzzy” books by authors “poised to hit the literary scene in a big way.” In a starred Kirkus review, her prose was described as “lush,” “dazzling” and “chilling,” while Southern Literary Review called the narrative “compelling” and “filled with hope.” Most recently, her novel was one of the winners of the 2026 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
Griffith began dabbling with writing about 10 years ago. Though she took no formal classes, she read extensively to learn more about the craft. For some time, she read a book a day just to immerse herself in language and story. She was particularly inspired by the psychological thrillers of Jonathan Kellerman and John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
Eventually, she started trying out the techniques she’d absorbed through immersive reading. On some days, she wrote for 12 minutes; on others, she wrote for 12 hours. And now, with the successful publication of One Beautiful Year of Normal, she’s working on edits to another book.
One Beautiful Year of Normal is an eerie family drama set in Savannah, Georgia, the location of Griffith’s second home. The novel explores mother-daughter bonds and generational secrets, and its depiction of mental illness is informed by Griffith’s clinical and forensic experience as a psychologist.
Griffith earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from Marshall University. During her doctoral work, she wrote a dissertation on stalking. Stalking, she explained, is often driven by the delusion that the victim wants to be stalked.
This research on stalking — and the frequently comorbid delusional disorder — informed the premise of her novel.
“With delusional disorder, you can be talking to a person and they seem almost completely normal,” she said. “But then they say something so off the wall and bizarre, and you know they have a delusion. For instance, they may believe that the lower half of their arm doesn’t really belong to them.”
In One Beautiful Year of Normal, the mother has a delusion that if she speaks, something bad’s going to happen, Griffith said. “So, she completely stops talking and never talks again.”
Follow Griffith through a typical day, and you’ll see her acting out a variety of roles: psychologist, professor, business owner, author and cook — a modern Renaissance woman. She and her husband, former Kenova mayor Ric Griffith, manage the Pumpkin House each year in the weeks leading up to Halloween. While she leaves the intricate pumpkin carving to others (she’s carved “exactly zero” pumpkins, she said), Griffith can be found cooking for and feeding the volunteers — and cleaning up the mess afterward.
Sometimes, you’ll find her cooking on the line over at Griffith & Feil Soda Fountain, the pharmacy that she and her husband also own together in Kenova. Her clinical behavioral health center is located right next door.
“When we first opened the business there, I was doing a lot of psychological evaluations, primarily for autism and other developmental disorders,” she said. “I would meet with parents to go over the results of the evaluations; I’d spend a good bit of time with them. And I can remember three times where, right when they were packing up their stuff to go, the pharmacy called from next door and said, ‘Is there any way you can come help us? We’re swamped.’ Each of those three times, I rushed over there and started cooking — and each time, I looked up and saw those parents sitting there, ordering food and staring at me. I could tell they thought, ‘Isn’t that the person we just met with?’”
Take it from the cook: if you visit Griffith & Feil Soda Fountain, order the Reuben or the fried chicken pecan salad. That’s what she recommends when her friends from Savannah come to town to visit. She loves giving them tours around Huntington and the surrounding area, she said, and delights in their surprise at how full and vibrant the city is. She shows off her favorite local dining spots, places like Jim’s Spaghetti (where she orders the fish) and Rocco’s Ristorante (where she likes the eggplant). At some point in the tour, she introduces them to the coffee at Old Village Roaster just beside the Keith-Albee. Fourth Avenue feels very similar to Broughton Street in Savannah, her friends sometimes tell her. It’s a community rich with character and full of charm — much like Griffith herself.
Whether in the community or on the page, Griffith is a behind-the-scenes force making magic happen.
