Evvie Drake Starts Over: A Novel

Evvie Drake is a recent widow, but she’s not grieving the way other people might—she was ready to leave her husband and her home in small-town Maine when she got the call that he had unexpectedly died. In the aftermath of his death, she stays in Maine, playing the part of a mournful widow and keeping her true feelings about her marriage a secret even from her closest friends. She lives alone in the big house she and her husband shared until former Major League pitcher Dean comes to town and she takes him on as a tenant in the apartment attached to her house. As Dean and Evvie get to know each other, they find an ability to discuss their pasts with one another and, in some moments, to move beyond them and begin again.

Evvie Drake Starts Over is pure delight. Linda Holmes weaves a coziness into the small-town setting and the characters that populate it, lending even the novel’s hard moments a kind of warmth. Evvie’s character is funny and real, and her friends, her family, and Dean are all drawn with detail and complexity that make them feel familiar and make the moments the reader spends with them feel like quality time. With humor and heart, Holmes tells a story about granting yourself joy and liberation, about building the kind of home you always wanted with the people you love.