Charlie Tanner has spent nearly half her life at an agricultural commune called Anam Cara in Cape Breton. After dropping out of college and severing ties with her family, she followed the man she believed to be the love of her life, James Grace, to a strict spiritual community led by former hippies who sought refuge on the shores of Bras d’Or Lake, out of reach of American law enforcement.

When James dies suddenly, 40-year-old Charlie falls mute. People swirl around her, offering condolences, and she clutches the urn holding his ashes as if it were the child they never had. A box of money stashed inside a wall of their home allows Charlie to flee the commune and rent a cottage in a small Vermont town, where she can process her grief in the garden. From a distance, she reviews the last twenty years and starts to see how unhealthy her relationship really was.

She reconciles with her parents, and they come for a visit, insisting on attending a local synagogue. While Charlie knew she had Jewish ancestry, her family never practiced religion during her childhood. However, when she cut them out of her life, her parents sought solace in their roots. At Shabbat services, she’s stunned by an immediate connection with the sexy rabbi, a widower named Parker.

Still, Charlie can’t put her past behind her. And then she learns that James’ sudden heart attack might actually have been a murder.

Charlie and Parker fall in love, and she tries to make sense of her past, but Anam Cara’s leader won’t let anything—or anyone—go. When he brings his bitterness to Charlie’s front door, she comes face-to-face with her fate—will she win a second chance, or linger in the destruction vindictive men have wrought?

Evoking the unlikely romance of Nobody Wants This and the intrigue and passion of Lucy Score’s Forever Never, I Love You, Charlie Tanner is a steamy story of second chances, midlife love, and starting over, with a whiff of intrigue and surprising twists that’ll keep you wanting more.