Down to Earth

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 27 ABR 2026

Cookbook author Turshen (What Goes with What) makes her fiction debut with a cozy queer romance exploring what it means to start over. It kicks off with Paige and her eight-year-old son, Bobby, moving from Brooklyn to small-town Sungold in the Adirondacks during a trial separation from her husband. While shopping at a local farmers market, she meets tattooed, flannel-wearing Frankie, who owns Two Peas Farm. Frankie's business is in trouble, and when Paige offers to help out by upgrading the farm's stodgy social media presence, a simmering attraction builds between the women, in spite of their vastly different backgrounds. As a summer storm brews, threatening the farm and the community, Turshen uses Frankie's preference for all things analog to explore the tension between the desire to preserve a more traditional way of life and the benefits of modernity. The novel is cheekily self-aware about borrowing from Hallmark movies with its arc of a city dweller transformed by country living, and Turshen grounds this well-trodden fantasy in the soil and sweat-coated realities of farm labor. Add in subtle humor and a bighearted portrait of queer connection and resilience, and this is sure to charm. (June)