Lynne Golodner
Charlie Tanner has spent nearly half her life at an agricultural commune called Anam Cara in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. After dropping out of college and severing ties with her family, she followed the man she believed to be the love of her life, James Grace, and settled into a life working in gardens and greenhouses and following the dictates of a strict spiritual community led by former hippies who sought refuge on the shores of Bras d’Or Lake, out of reach of American law enforcement.When James dies suddenly, 40-year-old Charlie falls mute. People swirl around her, offering condolences, and she clutches the urn holding his ashes as if it were the child they never had. A box of money stashed inside a wall of the home they shared allows Charlie to flee the commune and rent a cottage in a small Vermont town, where she can process her grief in the garden. From a distance, she reviews the last twenty years and starts to see how unhealthy her relationship with James really was.Eventually, she reconciles with her parents, and they come for a long visit, insisting on attending a local synagogue. While Charlie knew she had Jewish ancestry, her family never practiced religion during her childhood. However, she learns that when she cut them out of her life, her parents sought solace in their roots. At Shabbat services, she’s stunned by an immediate connection with the sexy rabbi, a forty-seven-year-old widower named Parker. Still, Charlie can’t put her past behind her. Her best friend Boden shows up, carrying shocking information he uncovered at the commune: James’ sudden heart attack might actually have been a murder. What’s more, Boden brings some disturbing biological ties between James and some sixteen children.As Charlie and Parker fall in love, and she tries to make sense of her past mistakes, Anam Cara’s leader, Armand Villencourt, won’t let anything-or anyone-go. Local police can’t help-until Armand brings his bitterness to Charlie’s front door. In the middle of an ice storm, she comes face-to-face with her fate-will she win a second chance at a better future, or linger in the destruction vindictive men have wrought? Evoking the unlikely romance of the Netflix series Nobody Wants This and the intrigue and passion of Lucy Score’s Forever Never, I Love You, Charlie Tanner is a steamy story of second chances, midlife love, and starting over, with a whiff of intrigue and surprising twists that’ll keep you turning pages.
