Once upon a House

When Dani Springer’s teenage son decides to move to the East Coast to live with his father, she pulls up stakes and heads for the Berkshires to open a bed-and-breakfast and wait for him to come to his senses. She finds the perfect New England Colonial with a magnificent English-style cottage garden. The only catch is that the house comes with the eighty-three-year-old owner, who will only sell the house if she can continue living in the guesthouse—rent free. At first, the arrangement seems simple enough, but nothing about the relationship between Dani and Clarissa Hamilton is simple because long ago, the house became the most important part of Clarissa’s life. Now that it is being turned into a business, she is not amused and finds ways to sabotage Dani’s efforts to get the Maples up and running.

The battle between the women is sometimes funny, sometimes painful.

The wild card in the mix is Evan Murray, the landscape architect who is reworking the cottage garden. The threads of Clarissa’s, Evan’s, and Dani’s lives become entangled as Evan and Clarissa come to terms with a past they didn’t know they shared.