On Sale: Now
Paperback
ISBN: 9781401309916
When lonely corporate wife Joanna Harrison runs away to Pawleys Island, she has no idea what happens next. But as a new life takes root, thanks to a passionate fisherman and a commitment to save endangered turtles, demands from her old life may force her to return. THE RICHEST SEASON is a stunning debut that will resonate with any woman who’s ever fantasized about leaving home to find herself.
Back to Top
“Beautifully written . . . Lets readers into the characters’ thoughts and feelings as they struggle to understand how the past has led them to their present situations.”
--Romantic Times
“A page-turner that will appeal to every woman who has ever felt lonely and isolated . . .”
--Raleigh News & Observer
“One of the best books I have ever read . . .”
--RomanceJunkies.com
“A compelling debut novel that tells the story of one woman’s courage to leave it all behind . . .”
--Fresh Fiction
“Skillful plotting keeps pages turning . . .”
--Publishers Weekly
“In Maryann McFadden’s brave and carefully made novel, THE RICHEST SEASON, two women set out on open-ended odysseys, one to find her life, one to find meaning in her death. Lonely Joanna gives up all she knows for a single chance at all she needs. When they meet, Grace relinquishes her aloof solitude to embrace life at its end, banking on the borrowed courage of a stranger. McFadden is out of the gate and on her way.”
--Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of THE DEEP END OF THE OCEAN and STILL SUMMER
“Set in the fabled landscape of South Carolina’s Low Country, THE RICHEST SEASON takes us on a heartrending journey of discovery. Maryann McFadden is an exciting new author who writes with compassion, wisdom, and astonishing skill.”
--Cassandra King, author of QUEEN OF BROKEN HEARTS and THE SAME SWEET GIRLS
“THE RICHEST SEASON is filled with so much honesty and searching and struggle involving three characters whom I grew to love, that I hated to come to the end.”
--Paulette Bates Alden, author of CROSSING THE MOON and FEEDING THE EAGLES
Back to Top
Maryann McFadden has been a successful realtor for the past twenty years, but she always wanted to be a novelist. THE RICHEST SEASON began as her thesis project when she returned to school for a Master’s degree. She lives in Hackettstown, New Jersey, where she is at work on her next novel.
Back to Top
Chapter 1
The sky was still dark, as it was every morning when Joanna Harrison began walking the two-mile route that serpentine through the development where she lived. The icy air hit her face, the only part of her uncovered, numbing her skin to a dull ache as she walked past massive houses majestically situated on two-acre lots. But unlike other mornings, she wasn’t thinking about her day at work, errands afterward, or her children thousands of miles away. She was seeing the weeks unfolding before her in her mind, and she shuddered, not from the cold, but because she knew everything was about to change. And she simply couldn’t do it again.
She’d never been a fighter. Years ago, Joanna had learned it was better to keep her feelings under control. And resentments? Well, growing up in her mother’s house, she’d discovered how to keep them buried deep inside. The only problem she found was the occasional bout of breathlessness as something vague or long forgotten seemed to bubble to the surface, like a voice struggling to be heard. As it did on that bitter morning in March. Just before dawn, as her sneakers hit the ground again and again with a soft crunching of frozen, dead leaves, following a routine she’d clung to like a lifeline, that voice rose to the edge of Joanna Harrison’s consciousness like the quiet crackling of lake ice about to thaw.
Leave.
Pumping her arms, she picked up the pace, her sleep-stiff muscles finally warming up. She stopped briefly, bending her left leg a few times until the knee clicked into place. A little arthritis, the harbinger of middle age. She thought of Sharon and how they would have laughed over this. Sharon was the only real friend she’d made when they moved to New Jersey three years ago. They had jokingly referred to each other as their “surrogate spouses,” going to soccer games and movies together, more married to their careers, traveled the country. Months ago Sharon had relocated to Texas. She missed her terribly.
The sun was just peeking over the barren hills to the east as she left the sidewalk and headed into the wooded trail that looped behind the houses. Within moments, pale winter sunlight flickered, illuminating the bare trees and the snow-splotched fields in the distance. A glimmer of something ignited inside of Joanna. It had been days since she’d seen the sun, and she could not recall a winter as bitter or endless as this one.
The first snow had come before Halloween, a brief flash of white that was gone within hours as the warm earth soaked it up. By Christmas, life as she knew it had come to a virtual standstill under the weight of nearly thirty inches of powder. She’d stood at the picture window, the cordless phone in her hand, waiting to hear from her children, stranded at different airports. The holiday she’d waited for was cut to a frantic forty-eight-hour visit, as Sarah and Tim rushed back to their own busy lives.
Back to Top
|
REVIEW COPY GOES HERE
