Weekend in Eighty-Eight — Bettye Griffin

After the failure of her marriage nearly twenty years earlier, Simone Degree has settled into a routine small-town life, working as a high school librarian, caring for her elderly mother, taking an annual vacation, and going on the occasional date…a situation that has become more rare as she gets older. Now, at 52, despite her vibrancy, she fears her time with the opposite sex might be a thing of the past…and then she meets Scott Cheeks.

Scott, a 54-year-old marketing manager from suburban Chicago, comes to Eighty-Eight to attend his mother's eightieth birthday celebration. He is immediately attracted to the lovely Simone and asks her to show him Eighty-Eight's night life. A night out results in them spending the rest of his time in town together and making plans to see each other again. But middle-aged love can be complicated when the parties live seven hundred miles apart; unlike young people, relocating would be foolhardy so close to retirement. Can they make it work?

Scott is the best thing to come along in years, but Simone has doubts. Not only is the geographical distance between them worrisome, but there's the complication of his first wife, who is now married to one of Simone's childhood friends. She doesn't believe there's that much cordiality in the world. But then a strange thing happens: While out with Scott, she gets a clue to a mystery that has haunted her for her entire life…the identity of her birth parents. Could Scott be bringing her a change in luck?

--------------------

Return to Eighty-Eight, Mississippi, in this new 69,000-word novel and catch up with the people and places you first became acquainted with in It Happened in Eighty-Eight. Get the answers to some questions raised in that book, and be prepared to have new questions arise!