Publisher's Synopsis
On the rugged shores of Bailey Island, Maine, two love stories-separated by decades-intertwine through the whispers of the past.
Reeling from the loss of her job, the end of her marriage and an empty nest, Kenzie Ross decides to fill the void temporarily by traveling to Bailey Island Maine to check out the cottage her old college mentor had bequeathed to her, accompanied by Duffy, the shelter dog the woman had adopted only months before her death. Stunned to discover Bailey House is far more than the rustic seaside bungalow she envisioned, Kenzie ends up deciding to stay and start fixing up the 150-year-old mansion big enough to shelter three or four families with ease.
Kenzie, determined after a marriage of always giving in, promises herself that she is going to be her own woman, learn to make her own decisions and not fall for the first man she meets. Then she nearly trips over the dangerously charming Sam Phillips who has his head under an old truck he's trying to fix.
While poking through the dusty old attic, Kenzie finds boxes of fun old puzzles, books it will take years to read and a wedding dress that had never been worn. On a whim, she tries it on, admiring the lovely dress in front of a tall oak mirror as old as the house.
Then it's 1943 and Eleanor Murray is happily planning her wedding. Her aunt is pinning up the hem of her gown while Eleanor smiles at her reflection. Then her fiancé barges into the room to announce he's just enlisted in the Army to join the war in Europe and their wedding will have to wait. Crushed, Eleanor hides her sense of abandonment, plants a Victory Garden and knits socks for Red Cross care packages for soldiers on the front lines.
As her fiancé's letters become more and more distant and her brother's best friend, home to recover after his plane is shot down, starts wooing her, Eleanor accepts her aunt's invitation to come stay with her in New York. She finds work at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a job critical to supporting the war, in an effort to keep the unspoken promises she made when it all began.
