46 and Then Some

Lacy Holloway is forty-six, and then some, and she is spending the summer doing two things at once. Emptying out her late grandmother's house one cardboard box at a time, and handing down everything she has learned to Gabby, the girl she took in at eight and is raising as her own.

She does it the only way she knows how. She tells her stories. Stories about the people of Caldwell Springs, Georgia, the small coastal town that raised them both. The woman who kept bees and taught her about going first. The father who walked to the end of his road every evening, watching for a son who had broken his heart. The neighbor who ate a warm tomato with her eyes closed and showed her how to actually be awake for her own life.

One ordinary story at a time, Lacy gives Gabby the whole of it. How to love hard and forgive sooner. How to let go with an open hand. How to keep the faith when it is hard to, and stay grateful even in the hard rooms.

It is a summer of goodbyes, and a summer of becoming. And somewhere in the middle of it, both of them learn the thing the title already knows. That somewhere around forty-six, and then some, you quit counting the years and start counting the moments, and the soft and sacred things you almost walked right past were the whole of it all along.

A warm, faith-filled novel in stories, for anyone who is still becoming.