Alone in a Cabin

by Leanne W. Smith

Overview

On the eve of Maggie Raines' fiftieth birthday, her husband announces he has gotten his young receptionist pregnant. Months later, newly-divorced Maggie sees an ad for an 1800s cabin billed as the "perfect writer's retreat." For years she has wondered if she has what it takes to be a fiction writer. Maggie rents the cabin for the week between Christmas and New Year's hoping the old log walls will inspire a story. And they do-just not the story she imagines.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780578922423
Publisher:	Leanne W. Smith
Publication date:	07/06/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	314
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

In this moving modern-day story about a woman trying to piece her life back together, readers are transported to an 1800s cabin. A tragic event that occurred at the old homestead and the people in the small town who were most impacted by it hold out unexpected hope and inspiration for the budding author, and for anyone trying to regain their footing in a broken and uncertain world. Alone in a Cabin is Leanne W. Smith's first contemporary novel. Her Amazon bestseller, Leaving Independence, and its follow-up, A Contradiction to His Pride, were post-Civil War historicals. All three stories have ties to the fictional Marston County in Tennessee.

Editorial Reviews

In this moving modern-day story about a woman trying to piece her life back together, readers are transported to an 1800s cabin. A tragic event that occurred at the old homestead and the people in the small town who were most impacted by it hold out unexpected hope and inspiration for the budding author, and for anyone trying to regain their footing in a broken and uncertain world.

Readers of Leanne W. Smith's Amazon bestseller, Leaving Independence, and her follow-up, A Contradiction to His Pride, will love this new contemporary tale of suspense set in the fictional Tennessee county of Marston.

From the Publisher

2021-08-22
A middle-aged woman trying to heal from a divorce retreats to an isolated cabin in this novel.

In Smith’s tale, 50-year-old Maggie Raines arrives at an old cabin off Patterson Road the day after Christmas, fresh from a divorce. Tom, her husband of 30 years, had revealed to her that he impregnated his receptionist, 26-year-old Bethany, and intended to help raise the child. This left Maggie reeling, “wondering if the next chapter of her life was to be an epic tragedy…a horror story…or maybe a suspense.” Packing her things from the house she and Tom shared all those years, she decided to become a writer and impulsively rented an old cabin in the woods of Marston County, 70 miles from Nashville, leaving her old life and her grown twins, Robbie and Cal, for a little isolation. Now, settling in that solitude, Maggie meets Zeke Thompson, a mysterious stranger who “looked like a fair-haired version of one of her teen idols.” He shows up at her door the same day a prisoner escapes from a nearby penitentiary. He quickly comes to seem unreal somehow—Maggie begins to wonder if she’s just imagining him. She confides all this to Marston County’s hardworking sheriff, Canon Dale, who listens sympathetically but privately notices that there are no extra tracks outside Maggie’s cabin, no evidence that anybody else has been there. Smith deftly presents Dale’s story parallel to Maggie’s in order to set up narrative momentum. He’s a workaholic who hasn’t taken a day off in 30 years, but he’s quickly attracted to Maggie—and almost immediately drawn into the mysteries that begin to deepen around her stay in the cabin. The author cannily crafts all of this in knowing and occasionally overlush prose, and she handles the unfolding mystery of Zeke with a great deal of skill. The romance between Dale and Maggie feels heavy-handed, but the rest of the intriguing tale works smoothly.

An engaging mix of bucolic mystery and the enigmas of the writing life.

Kirkus Reviews