The Second Coming of Lucy Hatch

Marsha Moyer's The Second Coming of Lucy Hatch is a 'keeper.'

Lucy is unexpectedly a widow. Her rancher husband Mitchell walks out into a field one morning and never comes back. And with his death Lucy comes to realize that during her fourteen-year-marriage to Mitchell she herself was slowly dying. So a rather numb Lucy moves home to Mooney, Texas, and the care of her born-again mother, her free-thinking Aunt Dove, and her over-protective brother and sister-in-law. Add to this mix the local handyman, Ash Farrell - guitar-playing, sex symbol, unconventional, and strongly attracted to Lucy.

This is a wonderful multi-level book. It's both a romance - Lucy and Ash are HOT - and a coming of age book. Lucy is forced to look to her past in show more order to create a future. I loved every page - from the low down Texas dive where Ash sings and is beaten up by a former girl friend to Mitchell's lonely tombstone engraved with only his name and dates.

The Second Coming of Luch Hatch gets an A from me. show less

I watched Ash Farrell for a while, his eyes closed in the spotlight, his guitar slung onto one hip, his voice digging down low and then arching up into the smoky rafters . . . Just, incredibly romantic, but the gamut of emotions feels true at the same time, and there are some lovely atmospheric descriptions of land and weather. Necessarily a bit of a fantasy, but hopeful, too.