Days Are Gone — Alan Watt

Alice just walked out of her marriage to aging rock star, Chick Wolfson, leaving behind her San Francisco penthouse and all the trappings this union conferred. She drives north to Seattle to stay with her folks, but never makes it. Chick cancels her credit cards â€" her parents disapprove of her choice mainly because she's spent her marriage lying to everyone including herself about the nature of their relationship. With her tank on empty, she crawls into Waiden, a small Oregon town off the coast, and checks into the crumbling Frontier Inn where she lands a minimum wage job. While there, she finds herself attracted to Webb Cooley, grocery clerk, and recent parolee of Oregon State Correctional Facility. Webb is quiet and withdrawn, with secrets of his own. Soon they are pulled into a relationship that they are each using to exercise their own particular form of escape. As they grow closer, their desire to be known by each other threatens to reveal the secrets from the past. Exquisitely written with a propulsive narrative, Days Are Gone explores the nature of regret, and how faith and forgiveness are the surest path to freedom.