With the same dry humor and compassion for his characters as Fredrik Backman, Sean Dietrich's latest novel highlights the good of humanity and the light that's always just around the corner.
Ex-cop Woody Barker lives on a houseboat (the Ship Happens) off the Gulf Coast and spends his days bickering/flirting with his ex-wife and attending doctor appointments about his malfunctioning ticker. He's already survived several heart attacks and is debating the merits of quitting smoking so he can get on the organ donor waitlist. But he gets the surprise of a lifetime when an old girlfriend reveals on her deathbed that Woody has a seventeen-year-old daughter he never knew about: Caroline.
Caroline is pregnant and trapped in an endless loop of bad choices. Her good-for-nothing boyfriend, "Tater," is the only "reliable" person in her life. But when her estranged dying mother begs her to go back to her singlewide trailer to dig up the bathroom vanity subfloor to "get something that needs to be gone yesterday," Caroline finds herself at the center of a very dangerous plot that--if she survives--has the potential to turn her world upside down in a positive and seismic way.
While Woody and Caroline don't know or trust each other yet, they instinctively know they can't (and don't want to) go through the world alone any longer.
Beloved Southern writer Sean Dietrich, also known as Sean of the South, once again brings people and places to life in this lyrical song-turned-story about found family, second chances, and the poignant power of love and forgiveness.
