The Ice and the Empty Nest

Quinn Donovan is forty-two years old, a rookie AHL head coach in coastal Maine, and living in a rented house with two daughters and reading glasses he still resents. Fourteen seasons as an NHL captain — dependable for everyone, present for no one — ended in a divorce that wasn't anyone's villain's fault. He is trying to learn how to be a person rather than just a reliable one. Maris Eldridge has been the only doctor in Thornwick Harbor for eight years. She raised her daughter alone, built her practice from scratch, and quietly decided that wanting something is just the fastest way to lose it. Then Quinn limps into her waiting room in October. Neither of them planned for this. This is a later-in-life love story about two people who have already lived enough to know what it costs — the divorce that left no villains, the teenager who watches her father too carefully, the body at forty that is different from the body at twenty-two and fully, stubbornly, alive. Quinn and Maris are not second-best loves. They are the first loves that required both of them to grow up enough to receive them. The Ice and the Empty Nest is Book 1 in The Thornwick Mariners series. Each book is a complete standalone.