Literature often offers escape. The bookshelves are full of
stories that place us in exotic settings surrounded by beautiful
people living exciting lives --- elevating us, if only briefly,
above the mounting piles of laundry and the meals to be made. These
tales fill our need to explore "otherness" for a while. But it's
the more true-to-everyday-life stories that are often the most
satisfying because they provide the recognizable, the familiar
themes that we can all identify with on some level. It is here ---
in the telling of stories about common, ordinary people --- where
Barbara Delinsky excels.

In AN ACCIDENTAL WOMAN, Delinsky returns to Lake Henry, the scene
of an earlier novel, and revisits a few characters that you've met
before, if you follow Delinsky's work. (Don't take that to mean
that this is part of a series; it is not. It's stands alone as a
strong mystery and compelling character piece.) A 14-year resident
of the town, Heather Malone, has become the focus of national
attention. A quiet, well-liked woman who has made a life with
widower Micah Smith and his two children, Heather is at the center
of a 15 year old murder case and is suspected of being someone
else, someone entirely different.

As the town struggles to come to grips with the fact that they
might not truly know this woman that they have lived among these
many years, her friends stand beside her. Poppy Blake, in
particular, comes to the foreground as Heather's greatest
supporter. The story in many ways is more about Poppy than Heather,
who surfaces only infrequently to add tension to the unraveling of
the murder mystery, but whose true character we never really get to
know. It's Poppy, wheelchair-bound after a snowmobile accident and
now running the town's telephone messaging service, who, despite
physical limitations, charges forth to help Heather and at the same
time find true love with Griffin Hughes, an investigative reporter.
Griffin helps Poppy come to terms with the accident that left her a
paraplegic and shows her that she can have the future and love she
thought were out of her reach. It is Poppy that we see grow and
change throughout the book.

The mystery is a backdrop to the relationships that grow out of
bonds forged in trying times, in times of loss and helplessness.
For instance, Heather's imprisonment leaves Micah without a partner
during the maple harvesting season, but Delinsky delivers a town of
caring, helping hands reminiscent of another time period, a town
that steps forward to assist one of its own. In AN ACCIDENTAL
WOMAN, Delinsky gives us refreshingly realistic folk facing the
same issues and problems we all face --- loss and love.