Must Love Flowers

Macomber’s latest (after The Christmas Spirit) is a poignant novel about two women lifting up and supporting each other as they try and begin anew after suffering losses and struggles. Joan Sample, a sudden widow, spends years lost in her grief and reclusion. Finally ready to start living again, Joan decides to join a support group and tackle her loneliness by renting out a room in her house. She also hires a landscaping service (which happens to be run by a very handsome and caring gentleman) to tame her overgrown yard. Maggie Herbert is ecstatic to rent the room in Joan’s house, especially after the loss of her mother and having to live with her abrasive father who is addicted to alcohol. Maggie is working and scraping by to afford and attend nursing classes with the dream of building a career and bettering her life, but it is never going to happen if her father keeps wasting her money and leaving everything on her shoulders.