Casey Peabody at 31 has perhaps reached her lowest point. She is estranged from her father, who coached her as a young golf prodigy, after he is discovered in a compromising position as a high school coach, and she is reeling from the sudden death of her mother, who collapsed unexpectedly while on a vacation. Casey is currently living in what is basically a potting shed in back of a house belonging to a friend of her West Coast brother while waiting tables at a posh Harvard area restaurant in Cambridge. She’s in deep debt from college loans and without financial means or health insurance. A suspicious lump is worrying her. A would-be novelist, she is a good enough writer to have been invited to work at a few prestigious writers’ retreats, but after six years of diligently poking at her book, she is no where near finishing it. A chance encounter with another struggling writer, Silas, and an even more chance encounter with an older, well-to-do and well-known author, recently widowed and raising two precocious young sons, leads her into complicated relationships with both. An enjoyable book, written with hope and humor, by the author of the well-regarded "Euphoria," a historical novel based on the life and loves of anthropologist Margaret Mead. Recommended. We all need cheering up. 324 pp.
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