Lydia Casselberry’s world comes undone when she discovers that her husband of almost forty years is having an affair. Needing time to grieve and to decide whether to continue the marriage, she decides to flee from her Tampa home to a place she hasn’t been in decades – her family’s lodge in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. She tells no one where she is going, but writes two notes saying she needs to be alone. One is to her best friend; the other her husband will find when he returns from another of his continual business trips.
Healing begins in the solitude of nature and a place where she can rediscover herself. Memories of her youth and marriage flood back, but so do more questions. What she uncovers reveals that her husband’s betrayal is far deeper, and far more sordid, than she ever could have imagined. Her grief then turns to cold rage – and revenge that undoes his world.
Paula Stahel is a writer who has co-authored several books, contributed to numerous anthologies, led memoir classes and workshops, and edits both fiction and nonfiction. She lives in Tampa, Florida, where a variety of yard cats deign to allow her to feed them.