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On Sale: Now
Hardcover
ISBN: 9781401340896
Hey, readers, take a walk on the wild side!
Just put one foot in front of the other. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But when Noreen Kelly takes a buyout from her job of eighteen years and gets dumped by her boyfriend in one fell swoop, she finds it hard to know what that next step is --- never mind take it. At first Noreen thinks maybe her redundancy package could be an opportunity, a chance to figure out what to do with the rest of her life while her company foots the bill. Sure, she may have gotten high to “Witchy Woman” and grooved to ”Sweet Baby James“ back when James Taylor had hair, but she isn’t ready for her AARP card. Not yet.
But it’s the first time in a great many years that Noreen has time to herself --- and she has no idea what to do with it. When she realizes that she’s mistaken her resume for her personality, Noreen knows that she has to get moving, so she puts on a new pair of sneakers and a seriously outdated pair of exercise pants, and walks. She doesn’t get very far at first --- just to the end of her street, Wildwater Way --- but she perseveres, and when she’s joined by her neighbors Tess and Rosie, Noreen realizes that walking is not an extreme sport. It can actually be fun.
As the Wildwater women walk and talk, and talk and walk, they tally their steps, share their secrets, and learn what women everywhere are finding out --- that time flies and getting fit is actually fun when you’re walking with friends. Throw in a road trip to Seattle for a lavender festival, a career-coaching group that looks like a bad sequel to The Breakfast Club, a clothesline controversy that could only happen in the ’burbs, plenty of romantic twists and turns, and a quirky multigenerational cast of supporting characters, and the result is an experience that&srquo;s heartfelt, exuberant, and above all, real.
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"The women of THE WILDWATER WALKING CLUB are a delightful trio, full of heart and determination. As they --- literally --- put one foot in front of the other, the three new friends find unlikely paths that point them toward more fulfilling lives. Their journey left me genuinely inspired (and with the curious urge to go out and buy a clothesline)."
- Jean Reynolds Page, author of THE SPACE BETWEEN BEFORE AND AFTER
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Claire Cook is the bestselling author of SUMMER BLOWOUT, LIFE’S A BEACH, MUST LOVE DOGS, MULTIPLE CHOICE and READY TO FALL. She teaches workshops for aspiring writers and women coming into their own at midlife, and has had previous stints as a fitness teacher and dance and aerobics choreographer. She lives in Scituate, Massachusetts, with her husband, where she walked 10,000 steps a day while writing this novel.
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Life works in funny ways sometimes. One day, you’re on top of the world, with everything going for you. The next day, you’re sliding into a sinkhole so deep it feels as though you’ll never be able to dig yourself out. It’s like that for Noreen Kelly. One day, she has an incredible boyfriend and a promising career. The next day, the guy is making himself scarce and she has taken a pretty much mandatory buyout on her job. Unaccustomed to such pitfalls, she allows herself to indulge in self-pity, augmented by binges of Ben & Jerry’s and slogging through the long days in her robe.
“How did it start, this downward spiral? At what point did I lose myself to sixty-hour work weeks, slovenly behavior, and really crappy taste in men?”
At least Noreen has enough sense to realize that she can’t stay inside the ice cream carton forever. And there’s a bonus: Her ex-employer is involved in athletic shoes. Since she doesn’t know how long before her employee discount is cut off, Noreen gets moving and turns to buying sneakers instead of Chunky Monkey. Now all she needs is to put them to good use.
On Wildwater Way, Noreen hooks up with a couple of neighbor ladies, both of whom need the exercise as much as she does, only for very different reasons. They pair up, lace up and head out. Before long, the Wildwater Walking Club is in full force. The ladies work hard every morning, pedometers fired up along with their motivation, and step by step they get back into shape. All that hard work, they decide, deserves a reward. The only question is: What should it be?
Choosing just the right way to repay themselves for their remarkable discipline turns out to be almost as much fun as the reward itself. Of course, it must involve a journey, one that takes them far enough that it will at least equal their daily walking efforts. The energy Noreen used to put into her job takes a new direction, leading her down creative paths she never knew she had. The other two grow to enjoy their newfound focus, too, giving them a new outlook and an understanding of what’s truly important to them. Once the trio that calls itself the Wildwater Walking Club gets going, they turn out to be unstoppable. And their enthusiasm just may be infectious!
Claire Cook’s book is as much about friendship as it is about the journey getting there. These three women find that their routine becomes a necessity, an obsession, and ultimately a reward. As they walk, they learn about each other, about themselves, and about the world. And each one learns to conquer her demons. THE WILDWATER WALKING CLUB is a feel-good novel. By the end, you can’t help but feel that anything is possible if you put your mind to it and just get going.
--- Reviewed by Kate Ayers
 Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.com.
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Day 1
132 steps
on the day i became redundant, i began to walk. okay, not right away. First I lay in bed and savored the sound of the alarm not going off. I’d been hearing that stupid beep at the same ridiculous time pretty much every weekday morning for the entire eighteen years I’d worked at Balancing Act Shoes.
I stretched decadently and let out a loud, self-indulgent sigh. I pictured the zillion-count Egyptian cotton sheets I’d finally get around to buying. I’d pull them up to my chin to create a cozy cocoon, then wiggle down into the feather bed I’d buy, too, a big, fluffy one made with feathers from wildly exotic free-range birds.
I’d once had a pair of peacock earrings that came with a note saying, “Since peacocks lose their feathers naturally, no peacocks were harmed in the making of these earrings.” I’d always meant to look that up to see if it was a marketing ploy or if it was actually true. If so, then maybe I could find a peacock feather comforter. Though I suppose what would be the point of using peacock feathers in a comforter if you couldn’t see them? Perhaps I could invent a see-through comforter that let the iridescent blues and greens shimmer through. Though I guess first I’d need to come up with a zillion-count see-through Egyptian cotton.
I closed my eyes. I flipped over onto my back and opened them again. I stared up at a serious crack, which I liked to think of as the Mason-Dixon Line of my ceiling. My seventh-grade history teacher would be proud she’d made that one stick.
I rolled over, then back again. I kicked off my ordinary covers. On the first morning I could finally sleep in, I seemed to be more awake than I’d been at this hour in decades. Go figure.
After a long, leisurely shower, a bowl of cereal, and an online check of the news and weather, I called Michael on his cell at 8:45 a.m. It rang twice, then cut off abruptly without going to voice mail.
So I sent him an e-mail. “Call me when you can,” it said.
A nanosecond later my e-mail bounced back. “Returned Mail: Permanent Fatal Errors,” it said.
I dialed his office number. At least that voice mail picked up. “Hi, it’s me,” I said. “I seem to be having technical difficulties reaching you. But the good news is I have all the time in the world now. Anyway, call me when you get this.” I laughed what I hoped was the perfect laugh, light and sexy. “Unless, of course, you’re trying to get rid of me.”
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