Flowers on Main

Bree O'Brien is a playwright whose last two plays flopped. Her bond with her volatile mentor has also collapsed. She leaves Chicago and the regional theater where she hoped to build a career, and goes back to her hometown of Chesapeake Shores.

There she plans to open Flowers on Main, a venture she expects to give her a fresh challenge and a different kind of satisfaction. Home is not as calm as she hoped. Her estranged mother is around, and her former lover is angry with her.

That former lover is Jake Collins. He has plenty of reasons to want Bree out of his life, yet one outweighs them all: he is still in love with her. He could put the old hurt behind him if he were sure she means to stay. Nobody, Bree included, can say whether she does.

This is a small-town contemporary romance built on a second chance between two people with a painful history. It also deals with a strained mother and daughter relationship and a woman rebuilding after professional failure. The question driving it is whether Bree will commit to a place and a man she once left, and the only way to find out is for both of them to take a risk.