No wonder Lucy Maud Marshall is having a whopper of a bad day. She just lost her long-awaited promotion and her job to a younger woman. Instead of coasting toward a cozy retirement, she's come to a dead stop. The Millard, Illinois library was more than her career for a whole lot of years--ever since her young fiancé jilted her and broke her heart.

But Lucy Maud isn't about to spend the rest of her life feeling sorry for herself. She's packing up her car and hitting the road, her destination the hometown she left decades before, a little house with big possibilities as a fixer-upper, and a surprise four-legged companion. Then romance--something she never dreamed could happen--comes along in the form of a handsome widowed businessman. What's a shy bookish woman to do? After all, none of the novels she's read or recommended contain a chapter on the rist or the joys of learning how to love again...