Evvie Drake Starts Over

Linda Holmes's Evvie Drake Starts Over, published in 2019, is set in a small town in Maine. Eveleth Drake, known as Evvie, has been widowed for a year and rarely leaves her house. Everyone in the town, including her best friend Andy, assumes that grief is what keeps her indoors, and she does not correct them. In New York, Dean Tenney is a former major-league pitcher who is struggling with the yips: his arm no longer does what he asks of it, and he cannot work out why. Andy, who is a childhood friend of Dean's, invites him to Maine for a few months, which looks to him like a chance to reset.

Dean rents the flat attached to Evvie's house, and the two of them agree on the terms of the arrangement: he will not ask about her late husband, and she will not ask about his career. Over the months that follow, the bargain and the house they share become the ground on which both of them start working out what comes next.

Evvie Drake Starts Over was Holmes's first novel. She is an American author, cultural critic and podcaster who writes for NPR and hosts the podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, and she has since published further romance novels.