Lucy Hatch Series by Marsha Moyer

I was thirty-three years old when my husband walked out into a field one morning and never came back, and I went in one quick leap from wife to widow. Lucy Hatch never expected more of life than to spend it on an East Texas farm with her silent and stoic husband, Mitchell... moreI was thirty-three years old when my husband walked out into a field one morning and never came back, and I went in one quick leap from wife to widow. Lucy Hatch never expected more of life than to spend it on an East Texas farm with her silent and stoic husband, Mitchell. Now that the curtain has abruptly come down, she's back where it all started -- in tiny Mooney -- living in a rundown old house perched on the edge of nowhere, meaning to carry out her widowhood in the manner of her old maid Aunt Dove, in peaceful solitude. But life, and the folks of Mooney, have other plans for Lucy. In hardly any time at all, she's mortified her entire family. And without even trying, she's caught the eye of the local handyman, Ash Farrell -- lifting eyebrows and setting tongues wagging. Everyone in town, it seems, thinks the guitar-playing, lady-loving Ash is the wrong choice of company for a brand new widow. All Lucy Hatch knows for sure is that she hasn't had much worth remembering in her first thirty-three years. This is her life, after all, and for the very first time, she intends to live it. Marsha Moyer's exhilarating debut is a funny, poignant, and winsome tale about self-discovery and starting over at the beginning -- and of love popping up in the most unlikely place and time to transform a heart and nourish a soul. You're never going to forget Lucy Hatch. less

From Marsha Moyer, the critically acclaimed author of The Second Coming of Lucy Hatch, comes a second novel as rich in atmosphere and heart, as brimming full of colorful, unforgettable small-town characters and incidents as her notable debut. On a lazy June morning in Mooney -- a wooded patch of sparsely populated northeast Texas -- a shiny red Chrysler sedan pulls up to the home of Lucy Hatch and her live-in beau Ash Farrell, depositing a teenage girl on their doorstep before speeding away... moreFrom Marsha Moyer, the critically acclaimed author of The Second Coming of Lucy Hatch, comes a second novel as rich in atmosphere and heart, as brimming full of colorful, unforgettable small-town characters and incidents as her notable debut. On a lazy June morning in Mooney -- a wooded patch of sparsely populated northeast Texas -- a shiny red Chrysler sedan pulls up to the home of Lucy Hatch and her live-in beau Ash Farrell, depositing a teenage girl on their doorstep before speeding away. For Ash, town carpenter and musician, the unheralded arrival of his daughter, Denise -- whom he hasn't seen in nearly eight years -- is a major life-altering shock. It's a surprise for Lucy as well, since she's had little reason till now to recall the fourteen-year-old's existence. And the unanticipated intrusion is certain to further complicate Lucy's increasingly complex relationship with Ash, now that she has discovered she is pregnant with his child. Angry, rebellious, and uncertain -- having been unceremoniously dumped by her mother on the father she barely knows and the stranger who now shares his life -- Denny must somehow find a place where she belongs in a town far tinier than any that has imprisoned her before. But it's not until she picks up Ash's guitar -- and hears the songs that were born in her father's heart -- that Denny and Ash are drawn closer together by the common bond of music. In its haunting strains and true emotions lies hope -- that Denny can finally settle down, that she and Lucy can build a real friendship, that all of them can become, at last, that most rare and precious thing: a family. But anything that happens in a place as small as Mooney has repercussions for every one of its residents. And when an ugly incident divides the community -- raising specters of suspicion, hatred, and intolerance -- the members of the growing Farrell-Hatch household will be deeply affected as well. From its rollicking dance halls to its tree-shaded front porches, the world Marsha Moyer creates in The Last of the Honky-tonk Angels draws us inexorably in and makes us feel right at home. A glorious novel of love, family, and forgiveness, it is at once funny and poignant, startling and uplifting, richly imbued with the author's luminous prose and a vitality that reminds us all of how good it is to be alive. less