
Since she was eighteen, Dee Moreland Taylor has survived everything alone. She micromanages her small business, her virginity, and her relationships with anyone who might get too close, including her newlywed husband Eric, and especially God.
Now in her mid-40s in rural Kentucky, Dee's life is spiraling without her permission. Drowning in debt, navigating menopause, and trying to hold herself up to scripture's standards as a late-in-life wife, she makes a calculated trade: she'll train Eric for an elite ultramarathon using the one thing she's always controlled: sex. But when injury sidelines their training, her sexual awakening stalls. Dee is alone again, faced with her own desire, and no guide for what comes next.
SUBMIT is a late coming-of-age debut novel about a Black woman caught between trauma, purity culture, and menopause — and what it means to surrender to faith.
Coming June 1, 2026
PRINT (Paperback + Hardcover)
Available via Libby and OverDrive at your local library — June 1
SUBMIT is available June 1, 2026
Pre-order available now
Our print editions may appear on Amazon via wholesale catalog distribution, but we encourage readers to support indie booksellers instead.
Ask your local independent bookstore to order SUBMIT
“What unfolds in these pages is more than a story of early menopause or recovery — it is a sacred unraveling. A woman coming face-to-face with herself beyond the layers of grief, guilt, expectation, and the quiet weight of what she has been taught to carry as a Black woman.
Natasha Lewin names what many of us have felt but have not always had language for. With remarkable creativity and gut-wrenching honesty, SUBMIT holds up a mirror — one that reflects both the strength and the strain of navigating purity culture, respectability, and the unspoken pressures that shape our identities.
SUBMIT names the tension of holding both shame and confidence, then invites us into something deeper: truth, healing, and freedom.
This book will meet you where you are and gently call you back to yourself and to God.”
Dr. Aerial Ellis, Founder, Black Women Pray
“SUBMIT invites deeper curiosity and compassion for what others carry. With honesty, it offers a look into one woman’s journey of facing — and at times avoiding — grief shaped by deeper layers of trauma, revealing the quiet loneliness that can emerge when loss remains unspoken.”
Stefanie Elkins, End-of-Life Doula & Founder, Death Over Drafts
"Running can be transformative — even feel familiar, like a warm blanket. But it always brings equality and a new understanding amongst all those who do it. There is but one simple goal: to cross a finish line. First, we must all submit to where our true ability lies. With patience, transformation does take place. That may be a metaphor for training and life."
David A. Levine, Head Coach, Los Angeles Road Runners, Author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Marathon Training
Stage of Grace Press is an independent literary publisher based in Los Angeles.
We publish the books mainstream publishers won't. Stories that don't fit in one box, from authors who don't either.
Our debut title, SUBMIT by Natasha Lewin, is available June 2026.
CONTACT US
PRESS
For interview requests, review copies, and press inquiries: press@stageofgracepress.com
Press kit available upon request.
Stage of Grace began in 2023 by awarding grants to playwrights of color whose work reckons with faith.
Past recipients include Rodney Gardiner, whose Smote This, A Comedy About God and Other Serious $H*T premiered in 2023 and went on to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2024, returning for the 2026 season, and Italome Ohikhuare's award-winning Mermaid, which premiered at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2024.
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