The Fountain

A marriage is in trouble when the wife's first love returns in this "perfect beach book that examines the nagging question, 'what might have been?'" (Booklist).

What if you had a second chance at love that was denied long ago? This is exactly what happens to Casey Becket two days before she and her husband, Michael, are to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary. For there, suddenly, standing in her backyard by the fountain, is Will Combray, the man she once deeply loved and who jilted her on their wedding day. Will tells Casey that he's come back in order to try to piece together his own life, which has been a series of emotional failures. He knows in his heart that everything went wrong for him the day he left her.

Will's reappearance throws chaos into Casey's ordered life. Her marriage to the kind and faithful Michael Becket, who has been her best friend since childhood, has been a source of great comfort, if not passion. But now, with Will's sudden return after more than twenty years, Casey is forced to ask herself a difficult question. Which is the better life. one that is calm and contented or one unpredictable and deeply charged? Tugged in one direction by faithfulness and honor, and in another by pure desire, Casey Becket must relive her own troubled history to discover which choice will satisfy her heart.

Praise for Emily Grayson:

"Grayson has a gift for capturing how relationships begin and develop and a sympathetically attuned insight into human nature." —Publishers Weekly