Lauraine Reads: Welcome to Last Chance

This month my favorite household appliances are window fans. Since I live in an older house sans air conditioning, these fans are heaven sent. Add in an ice-filled bandana for my neck and a cool glass of iced tea and I’ll survive these hot summer days very nicely. For all of my complaining about the heat, my tomatoes simply love it and I do so delight in the longer summer evenings.

Theoretically, summer is supposed to be a time of leisure with extra time for reading. I hope you are finding it so. This month I am happy to introduce you to a new author. Cathleen Armstrong lives in northern California and is both a student and a friend of mine. She wrote a great novel titled Welcome to Last Chance.

Lainie Davis is on the run from an abusive relationship, with a chip on her shoulder the size of California. She has learned life is much safer if you don’t let anyone get too close to you. Her ailing car hiccups to a halt in the parking lot of a bar in Last Chance, a hole-in-the-wall town in New Mexico, a far cry from her original destination of El Paso, Texas. With only the bar still open, she goes inside to ask about the town’s auto mechanic and the location of the nearest motel.

When the bartender says he can’t help, the motel is closed and she can hire a tow truck in the morning, Lainie ends up sleeping in her car. With little money, a need to keep her location secret and absolutely no trust in people anywhere, she has to learn that in this particular small town, people do care and in spite of her biting resistance, will help her find a place to live, a job if she so desires, and perhaps even a new life.

The characters are engaging. The story rips right along, so much so, I had to abandon my rule of reading only a couple of chapters a night and just push on to the end of the book, totally ignoring my need for sleep.

Cathleen has already won one award for this book and I’m sure there will be others. Her second title is One More Last Chance, and I am anxiously awaiting its release.

I am coming down to the wire writing my next contemporary novel, Someday Home. It’s scheduled to be available next summer.

Good news for historical readers. The first book in the Songs of Blessing series is scheduled for release in October.

In To Everything A Season, you’ll return to Blessing, ND, meet some new characters and catch up with some old friends. Three student nurses from Chicago come to Blessing for training and the town might never be the same, especially after the bank is robbed. Hope you’ll like it.

Happy reading and writing and may August please slow down at least a little bit.