March 1, 2024
Reagan Farrow is a gifted writer who doesn't want to publish her novels under her own name. She's intimidated by Adele, her eldest sister and CEO of Farrow Records, who has managed their mother, country music legend Luella Farrow, and her career ever since their father passed away. Luella had a musical partner, Lynn Davenport, but they split up in 1994 under mysterious circumstances. Reagan soon hears from a publishing friend that an anonymous tell-all about Louella will be published, and Reagan wants to prevent it before Adele finds out. Meanwhile, after losing his mother, Micah Davenport finds out that Franklin Davenport, Lynn's husband, can't be his biological father and wants to discover the truth. Luella is performing at Watershed, a big music festival in Washington, and wants to bring her daughters on a cross-country road trip. Micah is a licensed bus driver and volunteers to drive them, hoping to find answers. He forms an immediate connection with Reagan, while she learns to seek out God for help in navigating the difficult relationships and conversations ahead. As the second book in Deese's A Fog Harbor Romance series, this is a vivid and emotional journey that readers will remember for a long time after it's over.
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Starred review from March 1, 2024
Luella Farrow has spent decades in the music business, and the larger-than-life country singer should be celebrating, but she can't bear to watch the lives of her three daughters implode: Adele is so stressed she can hardly breathe, Hattie is enduring a scandalous divorce, and Raegan has lost out on a major publishing contract. When Luella parks a vintage metallic gold tour bus in the driveway and announces a surprise cross-country road trip, Raegan isn't sure any of them will survive the summer. The cute bus driver, Micah Davenport, is a momentary distraction, but his mother's journals from Luella's first tour might reveal the biggest family secrets of all. As the bus travels through the South in the dead of summer, storms both literal and figurative threaten to derail everyone's plans. VERDICT Deese's (The Words We Lost) latest is a beautiful story of faith, family, and the power of forgiveness. This second installment in the "Fog Harbor" series can be read as a stand-alone and will appeal to women's fiction readers as a Dolly Parton-esque tale of hard-won fame. Suggest to fans of Charles Martin and Amanda Cox.
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