A SAFE PLACE TO LAND DEE ERNST
But Craig Ferris isn’t some kid. He is a grown man, the product of Sam’s youthful affair. Craig arrives with his three daughters after hastily leaving Chicago behind. Craig has no intention of staying in the small town of Cape Edwards. He needs to find a job and place to start a new life for himself and his girls after the death of his wife the year before.
Jenna grudgingly makes room in her home—and her life— for Sam and his girls, while fighting a growing physical attraction to the man who reminds her so much of her lost love. But the more time she spends with Craig, the more she realizes he is nothing at all like his father. And lust is slowly turning to something else as she begins to know and understand the man who told her, from the very beginning, that he has no intention of staying in Cape Edwards.
Will the small-town magic of the Eastern Shore convince Craig that this is the best place for his new family? And can he believe that Jenna loves him for himself, rather than as a substitute for the larger-than-life Sam? A Safe Place to Land is about two cautious people slowly trying to find room for each other in the most treacherous landscape of all, the human heart.
MY REVIEW:
This was an excellent story that kept my total attention. The premise was so usual and yet nowadays it shouldn’t have surprised me but it did.
I was really sad each time I would have to put it down to have to do anything. Jenna Ferris is now a woman of forty who is a registered nurse. Who works in Norfolk but drives over the bridge back and forth, three days a week, to her home on Cape Edwards. You see she lives in a home her and her ex-husband Sam own together on the Chesapeake shore. It’s eight acres that she has now deemed a farm for the tax break so maintain the taxes for her half.
Sounds weird right now this is where you get to do some math. They have been divorced for a little over twenty years now. Your math is correct she was all of eighteen barely. But here is the part I didn’t tell you Sam was forty at the time they married. It was purely a lust filled union because they only made it five of the worst years of her life. He wanted the little wife to give him children which never happened for them and she wanted to go to college which she did.
Along with the partying and late-night studying and what not he didn’t like it. Then one day he took off to N.Y. and divorced her. She is not the age he was when they met.
Now the books open with Jenna meeting up with her lady friends for their standing Saturday morning breakfast at Town Pharmacy. All five are faithful along with her there is Terri, Marie, Karen, and Stella. All older but all fun and wise. She loves and hates and they feel the same about her. True friends and they know it and feel the same way.
On this day they have the news they don’t want to share with her. Sam has dropped dead of a heart attack in the towns tourist staple of their loyal hangout Sam’s bar. She’s blown away. Because although we were not great as a married couple they were wonderful friends and even better in bed. She knew he ruined her for other men hence why she had never remarried. She had had sex she’s not crazy. But he was her first love. Not being able to give him children and going to college did them in.
Five days after his death she went to see Ellis Summer her childhood friend and Sam’s lawyer. She knew he had no family. So, she wanted to know if he had anything she needed to do a funeral. But Ellis dropped a bomb. He tells her he had a son. Who lived in Chicago. That the woman he loved was someone he had madly love in his twenties never told him he had a child, a son. But she was dying so she told him. Now, Jenna was pissed and Ellis was now her target. Since he had been naked with her in second grade she had expected loyalty and she knew she had gotten none.
Days went by and she gets a call at work from Ellis saying could she call a neighbor that her pack of dogs was surrounding Craig Ferris’ car. He and his daughters could get out of his car. She asked why he would. He said he has a key to get in. Now she was doubly pissed at Ellis. He said it is half his and that since his three daughters are so well behaved and looked too tired and sad what did she want him to do?
She said no neighbor was coming. She would be there in thirty minutes. When she gets there the top of her head is ready to pop off. But when she gets out of her car she hears little voices singing through open car window the Frozen Disney song. When she rounds the car, she gets her first glimpse of Craig and she almost faints. He looks just like his dad did when she met Sam. She is ready to be mad at him but he asks, “Will your dog’s eat my girls?”
His concern was for his daughters. Then there was twin daughter coming peeking around his legs asking fifty rapid questions but looking like angels. But the older one about twelve looked so sad and tired. She hears Craig say, “Can we come in and talk? We’re kind of tired.” The wind was knocked out of her sails.”
So, it starts life with this family until he can find a job, sell the bar, find a place to live for him and his girls. Most of that she can buy him out. Everything she thought she knew about Sam had been a lie a real betrayal all these years.
This is told from Jenna’s POV the only thing I wish we could have had a little more of Craig’s POV. How did he feel about his dad’s betrayal about Jenna? Etc.… If I could give this book more I would. I give this book 5++++ stars. Provided by netgalley.com.
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