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The Butternut Lake Trilogy, Book 1
by Mary McNear
It's summer, and after ten years away, Allie Beckett has returned to her family's cabin beside tranquil Butternut Lake, where as a teenager she spent so many carefree days. She's promised her five-year-old son, Wyatt, they will be happy there. She's promised herself this is the place to begin again after her husband's death in Afghanistan. The cabin holds so many wonderful memories, but from the moment she crosses its threshold Allie is seized with doubts. Has she done the right thing uprooting her little boy from the only home he's ever known?
Allie and her son are embraced by the townsfolk, and her reunions with old acquaintances - her friend Jax, now a young mother of three with one more on the way, and Caroline, the owner of the local coffee shop - are joyous ones. And then there are newcomers like Walker Ford, who mostly keeps to himself - until he takes a shine to Wyatt... and to Allie.
Everyone knows that moving forward is never easy, and as the long, lazy days of summer take hold, Allie must learn to unlock the hidden longings of her heart, and to accept that in order to face the future she must also confront - and understand - what has come before.
"Plot really isn't the point of books like these; it's about the characters, and McNear has admirably crafted people worth following." - Kirkus
"[This] charming debut should attract fans of Susan Wiggs and Luanne Rice." - Booklist
"McNear has created a sweet romance wrapped in several interesting storylines. It's easy to root for the happiness of all the leads, and it seems likely that all will find peace and contentment." - New York Journal of Books
This information about Up at Butternut Lake was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Mary McNear lives in San Francisco with her husband, two teenage children, and a high-strung, minuscule white dog named Macaroon. She writes her novels in a local doughnut shop, where she sips Diet Pepsi, observes the hubbub of neighborhood life, and tries to resist the constant temptation of freshly made doughnuts. She bases her novels on a lifetime of summers spent in a small town on a lake in the northern Midwest.
If there is anything more dangerous to the life of the mind than having no independent commitment to ideas...
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