A Risk Worth Taking
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Life has not turned out the way that Dan Porter had planned. He thought that when he married Jackie twenty-five years before, he would be providing for her and their family until he could retire to a small house on the Devon coast and sit with a smug smile on his face, knowing that he had not only done his bit to perpetuate the human race, but had achieved it with distinction.
But life doesn't always turn out the way you imagine it will. Firstly, Jackie's little job turned into a high-powered executive position with a top fashion house which required most of her time and attention, leaving only a sliver of a moment for her parenting and home-making duties. Secondly, that he would suffer an out-of-character brainstorm, leave his safe job and start up a business on his own - but customers had not come rushing to his door. Dan becomes a house husband - and most of his time is spent studying his empty email inbox. Approaching fifty and having read a magazine article, he thinks of a new brainwave - to upsticks from London, buy a croft in Scotland and take over a mail order business with Jackie. The family are not amused...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pilcher (An Ocean Apart; Starting Over) crafts another engaging, happy-ending tale in the tradition of his mother, beloved British novelist Rosamunde Pilcher. Dan Porter was a successful London investment banker until the dot-com bubble burst. Now his portfolio's crashed, he's lost his job, and his beautiful wife, Jackie, the managing director of a design firm, is giving him the cold shoulder. His son, Josh, has dropped out of college, and his daughters Millie and Nina are miserable in the public school that dwindling assets force them to attend. A fortuitous inquiry into the sale of a trendy trousers factory in bleak Fort Williams, Scotland (sparked by an article about owner Katie Trenchard, which Dan reads in Woman's Weekly), leads to interim employment at Seascape, the prosperous prawn sales business belonging to Katie's disabled husband, Patrick. As Dan's getting drenched in Scotland, Jackie starts spending more time with Stephen, the design firm's young financial director. Pilcher relies heavily on coincidence, but readers will probably forgive strains on narrative credibility in their eagerness to root for Dan. Dan, Katie and Patrick all get along beautifully (barring one desire-driven slip between the first two, which only proves them human); Josh, who went north with his father, swiftly discards his slacker past for industriousness and affection for a young Latina co-worker, and Dan's stereotypical teenage daughters show emerging admirable traits. Jackie, on the other hand, sins and isn't sorry, so contented readers don't care what happens to her. They will care about Dan, though, and his children and friends, and will approve of Dan's belief that risks are worth taking, and that life can be a great game.
