The last thing city girl Blair Williams wants to do is travel to a remote island on a lake near the Minnesotan/Canadian border for her law firm’s company-wide retreat. Having long struggled with high-functioning depression and low self-esteem, she attempts to fake her way through the weekend while battling the ever-present melancholy and negative internal thoughts that plague her. While there, she takes comfort in the quiet and serene setting, befriending Graham, the owner of the barely surviving Ruby Lodge. With his mom currently in the nursing home, suffering from Alzheimer’s, and his dad preoccupied with taking care of her, Graham Peterson is left to run the lodge and deal with the growing pile of bills that threaten to jeopardize its future. After a successful retreat filled with various team-building activities, something small seems to shift inside Blair. Enough so that when Graham calls her weeks later, looking for legal advice, she doesn’t hesitate to drop everything and travel back to the island to help. When the work is done, will she end up returning to her lackluster life? Or will the lure of the quiet island and the way it—and Graham—makes her feel be too strong to resist?

When Sydney Peterson’s mother was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s years ago, her gut reaction was to run, finding it much too hard to stay and face the harsh reality. Years later, she finds herself back home in northern Minnesota as the lead architect on a large renovation project, and she’s determined to push aside the lingering heartbreak that ruminates while she’s there. As if that wasn’t hard enough, she comes face to face with another ghost from her past—one she has long despised. Cole Fredrickson. A grumpy cabin owner who refuses to sell the land she was hoping to attain. When a phone call inquiring about the sale of his cabin prompts Cole Fredrickson to travel home to check on the property, he finds the place in need of some fixing up after having neglected it for far too long. While there, he encounters not only past demons of his own, but a spunky, hint-of-a-flame from high school who proves to be irritatingly persistent about buying it. What she doesn’t know is that he doesn’t plan on ever selling—especially to her. But that doesn’t mean he won’t enjoy watching her try. Will their pasts threaten to keep them both firmly stuck in their ways? Or will coming together prove to be exactly what the other needs to heal?