Mary McNear

It's summer, and after ten years away, Allie Beckett has returned to her family's cabin beside tranquil Butternut Lake. She's promised her five-year-old son, Wyatt, that they will be happy there. She's promised herself that this is the place to begin again after her husband's death in Afghanistan. The cabin holds so many wonderful memories, but Allie is seized with doubts. Has she done the right thing uprooting her little boy from the only home he's...

"Butternut Lake is an idyllic place--but for one woman, her return to the lake town she once called home is bittersweet... Sometimes life changes in an instant. Quinn LaPointe grew up on beautiful Butternut Lake, safe, secure, sure of her future. But after a high school tragedy, she left for college and never looked back. Becoming a successful writer in Chicago, she worked to keep out the dark memories of an accident that upended her life. But now,...

"It's summertime on Butternut Lake, where the heat of noon is soothed by the cool breezes of the evening, where the pace grows slower, and sometimes, just sometimes, the summer light makes everything clearer...For the lovely Billy Harper, Butternut Lake is the place she feels most at home, even though lately she feels the only one listening to her is Murphy...her faithful Labrador Retriever. Her teenage son, Luke, has gone from precious to precocious...