But these were all just pieces, and pieces don’t make a story.
When I found out that home I’ve long been obsessed with is now a vacation rental, I jumped at the chance to grab a couple of writer friends and stay there for a few days. And it was in the house that my pieces began to come together.
There were books on the family history (including many, many pictures of the men with their hunting spoils, and men in trees holding rifles) and a lot of rich detail about the history of the house and when it was built.
The B.F. Dowell House became the not-so-disguised model for The Dowell House in this book. The Miner’s House is a nod to another historic house in town that has been many different businesses, including an Ice Cream Shop and a Candy Shop, and most recently, The Miner’s Bazaar, a Craft Café where I’ve spent a lot of time knitting and eating cheese. And while it too is altered for this book, the historic town of Jacksonville, Oregon, was the primary inspiration for Bear Creek.
These brick buildings are pieces of the past that still stand. Both changing, and unchanging all at once. The businesses and the people inside them are different, and yet they stand much the same as they ever have, proof that what’s gone on before has a lasting echo through time.
And as I reflected on history, the history in these buildings, the history of a family, it became the binding thread of this story.
Mary, Lark, Avery and Hannah have all become the women they are in part because of the histories of the women who came before them. From Addie, going back into further generations. A history unseen, not standing on the main street of a historic town, but that is a part of the way these women are put together, part of the very fabric that makes them. But in the end the history they take forward is their choice. To dwell in pain and secrets, or move forward in strength, writing a new story, an open book, for the generations that come after them.
It’s why I loved the idea of Addie feeling that sense of wholeness in the end, even though her daughters and grandchildren had yet to go on that journey. That in her final moments her past, her present, were all there, a complete story. And that in the end, it wasn’t regret, or pain, or disappointment that she carried with her, but it was the love she’d given and received in her life that shone brightest of all.
Keep reading for an excerpt from The Heartbreaker of Echo Pass by Maisey Yates.
The Heartbreaker of Echo Pass
by Maisey Yates
1
IRIS DANIELS WONDERED if there was a particular art to changing your life. If so, then she wanted to find it. If so, she needed to. Because she’d about had enough of her quiet, baking, knitting, underestimated existence.
Not that she’d had enough of baking and knitting. She loved both things.
Like she loved her family.
But over the last couple of months she had been turning over a plan to reorder her life.
It had all started when her younger sister, Rose, had tried to set her up with a man who was the human equivalent of a bowl of oatmeal.
Iris didn’t like to be mean, but it was the truth.
Iris, who had never gone on a date in her life, had been swept along in her younger sister’s matchmaking scheme. The only problem? Elliott hadn’t liked her at all.
Elliott had liked Rose.
And Iris didn’t know what bothered her more. That her sister had only been able to imagine her with a man when he was so singularly beige, or that Iris had allowed herself to get swept along with it in the first place.
Not only get along with it, but get to the point where she had convinced herself that it was a good thing. That she should perhaps make a real effort to get this guy to like her because no one else ever had.
That maybe Elliott, who liked to talk about water filtration like some people talked about sports, their children or once-in-a-lifetime vacations, was the grandest adventure she would ever go on.
That she had somehow imagined that for her, dating a man who didn’t produce any sort of spark in her at all, simply because he was there, was adventure.
That she had been almost eager to take any attention she could, the idea of belonging to someone, feeling special, was so intoxicating she had ignored reality, ignored so many things, to try and spin a web of lies to make herself feel better.
That had been some kind of rock bottom. Truly terrifying.
It was one thing to let yourself get swept away in a tide of years that passed without you noticing, as things around you changed and you were there, inevitably the same.
It was quite another to be complicit in your own underwhelming life. To have willingly decided to be grateful for something she hadn’t even wanted.
But as horrifying as that was, it was also what brought her down to the vacant shop where the Sugarplum Fairy bakery had once been.
She had been turning over the idea of leasing the building for months now.
And she had finally developed her plan enough that she was ready to dive right in. She had projections and products, had found out what permits she would need. She already had a food handler’s card. She had a whole business plan. The only thing she didn’t have was the building, and a business name.
One thing at a time.
There was a number posted on the sign on the window for a property management company. She took a deep breath, and dialed it.
“Hi,” she said when the woman
