Part of Series
When Sam Marconi packs up her home and leaves Las Vegas behind her, she pictures an idyllic life waiting for her and her daughter, Beth, in Bitterroot, Idaho. After saving for years, Sam finally has enough to chase her dream of owning and operating a small roadside motel. When she arrives, she finds her new business in a derelict state that makes Sam second guess her decision to move. For Olly Jones, home has always been in the stretch of road between houses. As a child, her parents raised her to embrace a nomadic life, a practice she continues as an adult. Unlike her parents, Olly doesn’t view the movement as her birthright. She feels an inexplicable, irrepressible tug pulling her ever forward, searching for…something. She trusts she’ll know it when she finds it. Sam and Olly’s first meeting is explosive with accusations of trespass and vandalism, backed up by mace. But when Sam puts up a flyer seeking skilled labor at an unskilled labor price, Olly is the only one who shows up for the job. Despite her initial reservations, Sam hires her and eventually realizes Olly is exactly what she needs. Charmed by Bitterroot and drawn in by Sam’s fierce independence, Olly lingers longer than normal. For the first time, she sees a potential for home and family. Will they find a way to build the life they’ve both been searching for? Or will they cling to the ties holding them to the past?
Author
Jove Belle was born and raised against a backdrop of orchards and potato fields. The youngest of four children, she was raised in a conservative, Christian home and began asking why at a very young age, much to the consternation of her mother and grandmother. At the customary age of eighteen, she fled southern Idaho in pursuit of broader minds and fewer traffic jams involving the local livestock. The road didn’t end in Portland, Oregon, but there were many confusing freeway interchanges that a girl from the sticks was ill-prepared to deal with. As a result, she has lived in the Portland metro area for over fifteen years and still can’t figure out how she manages to spend so much time in traffic when there’s not a stray sheep or cow in sight. She lives with her partner of twelve years. Between them they share three children, two dogs, two cats, two mortgage payments, one sedan, and one requisite dyke pickup truck. One day she hopes to live in a house that doesn’t generate a never ending honey-do list. Incidentally, she never stopped asking why, but did expand her arsenal of questions to include who, what, when, where and, most important of all, how. In those questions, a story is born.
