Evvie Drake Starts Over

Dialogue is definitely this author's strong suit, and I love a book with great dialogue. The stories her characters relay within the main story tells us all we need to know about them.

Evvie Drake is a young widow, but she isn't the grieving in the usual sense. She was leaving her husband the day she got the call about his untimely death. This secret haunts her throughout the book. It's one she doesn't feel she can share with anyone in her small town in coastal Maine, that is until a washed up, major league pitcher, Dean, rents an apartment from her.

Slowly, the truth about Evvie's unhappy marriage leaks out one evening when she's getting to know Dean. She tells him things she hasn't told her best friend, Andy, Dean's boyhood friend. Evvie inability to share this truth with her best friend keeps her locked in an healthy state, perpetually reliving her pain.

Dean, on the other hand, has his own issues. He has the yips. That's a baseball expression for, one day, not being able to do what used to come so naturally the day before. A second-baseman can no longer make the throw to first. An outfielder can't hit the cut-off man. In Dean's case, he was either throwing the ball in the stands, or hitting the guy in the batter's box. The team tries everything to get him back on track but, in the end, they let him go. He's treated mercilessly by his former fans, as only Yankee fans can treat an disgraced player.

Following these two loveable but broken characters through their acceptance of the truth shows the author's chops at how to make believable characters grow. Sometimes healing comes in the most unexpected ways, but good friends can help.

Lovely book if you love to read about how relationships are born, how they can derail, and then evolve. ADDED BONUS: It's especially fun if you love baseball too.