What an odd feeling it must be, to go back to high school 20 years after graduation, to live in the same dorm you lived in as a teenager, and then to turn around and see the boy — now a man — who broke your heart way back in senior year.
This surreal deja vu is at the core of Miriam Parker's second romantic novel, "Room and Board." Gillian Brodie, graduate of the Glen Ellen boarding school in California's wine country, packed up her broken heart and headed East right after graduation. After Yale, she went on to become a publicist to the stars, making work her entire life, until one of the stars betrayed her and torpedoed her career.
Now, her chic Greenwich Village apartment sublet, her big-windowed office shut down, she slinks back to Glen Ellen to work as a "dorm mom," supervising the students who live on campus. And there, unloading his daughter and her gear for the first day of classes, is the flop-haired, charming Aiden who — she suddenly realizes — she has never gotten over.
As in Parker's first novel, "The Shortest Way Home," wine and wineries — and grapes, and cheese and stunning California views — add atmosphere to this frothy tale about growing up and second chances.
Laurie Hertzel is the senior editor for books at the Star Tribune.
Room and Board
By: Miriam Parker.
Publisher: Dutton, 304 pages, $17.
LOCAL FICTION: Featuring stories within stories, she’ll discuss the book at Talking Volumes on Tuesday.
