The Road Towards Home

Cassandra Joyce, an entomologist with a long list of ex-husbands and no patience for rules, arrives at Clarion Court and immediately concludes it is not for her. Noah Shilling, a widowed professor whose son and daughter-in-law engineered his move, has reached much the same conclusion more quietly. They knew each other in college, briefly, a lifetime ago.

As changes at Clarion Court force both of them to think about where they actually want to live, Noah offers Cassandra the use of his Cape Cod cottage — which is not winterised, not comfortable, and not remotely a romantic gesture. Or it is, depending on which of them you ask.

Corinne Demas writes a warm, dry novel about two people well past the age at which fiction usually lets them start something. Its subject is late-life independence and the cost of giving a little of it up.