Joyfully Retired

I have been reading Mariah Stewart‘s books for a long time. I’ve been especially fond of her latest series, The Chesapeake Diaries. I’m reading them as fast as she writes them. Her fourth book, Hometown Girl, is the latest. Ms. Stewart creates characters that are real to me, but I also love this little town she has created on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay. I had a chance to ask the author about St. Dennis. I wanted to know what inspired her to create this charming little town. Here is her answer:

I love the Chesapeake Bay – the upper reaches are a short drive from my house in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and my husband and I have discovered several places that we really like, places like St. Michael’s and Rock Hall and Chestertown. I saw St. Dennis – the fictional site of my Chesapeake Diaries series – as a peaceful, historic place that had fallen on some hard times when the blue crab and the oyster populations in the Bay fell due to overfishing and pollution, but whose residents were resourceful and smart enough to reinvent the town, people who’d fight to force an economic shift for the better, people who were willing to invest in their community and capitalize on what they already had.

As the town grew in my mind, it was only natural to picture the people who lived there and the businesses that they opened with such optimism. There’s Bling, an upscale women’s boutique, owned by Vanessa Keating, who came to town to escape an abusive marriage and to find the half-brother she’d never met. There’s One Scoop or Two – Scoop to the locals – the ice cream shop owned by Steffie Wyler who grew up in St. Dennis and who makes all her own ice cream. Her brother, Grant, is the town veterinarian and runs a small animal rescue shelter. There’s Cuppachino, the coffee shop where the locals gather in the morning before they go to work to socialize, get their caffeine on, and yes, gossip. Carlo owns the place, and his wife, a potter, makes mugs for the local business people that are kept on a shelf in the shop and are filled when their owners arrive in the morning. Grace Sinclair inherited the town’s only paper from her father. Thanks to the dedication and hard work of her son, Daniel, the historic Inn at Sinclair’s Point is now the destination wedding spot on the Eastern Shore.

I could go on and on about the people in St. Dennis, but I think you get the picture. It’s small town USA, with all its quirks and characters. I’ve lived in small towns all my life, and it’s really the only kind of life I know, so when readers tell me how “authentic” St. Dennis seems, I guess that’s why. I don’t have a map of the town, except in my head, but I suppose it might not be a bad idea to have one made up!

I get mail every day from readers who tell me how real the characters – Grace, Berry, Steffie, Wade, Grant, Dallas, Vanessa, Grady, Clay, Brooke, Jesse – all seem. I’ve never thought about what inspired them, so the best I can say is that they all flow out of the town itself: each one just seemed to belong there. There are characters whose families have been there for many generations, and characters that are new to town who have to find their own way. Part of the fun in writing an on-going series like the Chesapeake Diaries is seeing how the characters weave in and out of the stories, how their relationships develop over time, and how they change and grow.

HOMETOWN GIRL is the fourth book in the series. It’s about Brooke Bowers, whose husband – the love of her life – was killed in Iraq. She was the golden girl – you know, the one who was Miss Everything, the girl for whom everything came easily. Now she’s the girl who’s come back home with nothing except her son and a lot of pain in her heart. She’s determined to start her own business (Brooke bakes a mean cupcake!) and raise her son – but never ever ever to fall in love again. Jesse Enright’s a lawyer who’s come to St. Dennis a stranger, even though his screw-up father’s estranged family has been an integral part of the community for several hundred years. Jesse hasn’t seen or heard from his grandfather, who heads the family law firm, since he was a child, but that isn’t stopping him from knocking on the door and asking for a job.

A man who obviously likes a challenge, Jesse’s as determined to win Brooke’s heart as he is to prove to St. Dennis that he isn’t his father, and that he’s worthy of a place in the family firm. Of course, because this is St. Dennis, there’s so much going on. There’s that big double wedding at the inn to plan for, and the…well, if you’ve been reading the series, you know there are always some surprises, some secrets revealed before the end of the book.

And no, I’m not going to give away any of them here. You’re just going to have to stay tuned…

Thank you so much, Ms. Stewart, for answering my question and offering a great teaser for the new book. If you would like to read Hometown Girl, the publisher has allowed me to giveaway one free copy to one of Joyfully Retired’s readers. Just leave a comment letting me know you are interested. I’ll leave it open until November 4th and then use Random.org to pick a winner.

Thanks to the publisher for my copy of the book and to TLC Book Tours for allowing me to be a part of it all. To see other stops on the book tour, visit the schedule here: TLC Book Tours