Turquoise

"I turned slowly, and he was there watching me, an amused smile playing on his mouth, his blue eyes dancing. He was casually leaning against the doorframe that connected the kitchen to the living room. My heart started racing and the butterflies that had disappeared long ago were there again fluttering in my stomach, like I was once again eighteen years old and no time had even passed."

More than twenty years ago, something terrible happened, and eighteen-year-old Allie fled her Nova Scotia home and all the people she knew and loved. But now her beloved grandmother is succumbing to the last stages of Alzheimer's disease and Allie must go home to face those she left behind including her best friend, Amy, and JD, her first love, who told her when she left that he'd never forgive her for her part in what happened.

In a beautiful, maritime setting and peopled with complex and appealing characters, turquoise moves back and forth in time between the life of the eighteen-year-old Allie and the world she now inhabits as a woman who's forced to confront how her life went so terribly astray. As Allie finally faces those she left behind, what she is about to learn is that sometimes things need time apart to grow, to bend, and to break, but that ultimately, what's meant to be will always find a way.