Evvie Drake Starts Again

On the day Evvie Drake decides to leave her mentally abusive husband Tim, she receives a phone call telling her he has been critically injured in a car accident. In Evvie Drake Starts Over, a debut novel (not a mystery) by Linda Holmes, when she arrives at the hospital Tim is dead. (Published by Penguin Random House and is out now.)

Unsure how she feels about his death, she withdraws into her home. Many months later her best friend Andy encourages her to take in a boarder - a former baseball player with a bad case of the “Yips.”

Dean Tenney had been at the top of his game with the New York Yankees when suddenly he could not throw a strike. Run out of town by the New York media and the fanatical fans, he is considered a “head case” by many. Dean has been poked, prodded, tested and retested, psychoanalyzed endlessly to try to discover what has caused him to lose his pitching control. His body is not injured, so he is written off as a lost cause, and he sets off for a quiet place where no one know him.

When he comes to Maine he has no intention of trying to return to baseball and settles in. He plans to stay anonymous until a reporter shows up and Evvie gives her a piece of her mind. Unfortunately this draws more reporters, but Dean handles them well. Before long he finds himself assisting the high school football coach and really enjoying himself.

During the winter Evvie discovers Dean at the deserted high school in the middle of the night throwing pitches to an imaginary catcher. That sets her on a path to "fix" what is broken in him.

This unlikely pair spend time together trying to fix each other. A delightful story of friendship and love.



Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher.