Sometimes you have to step out of your protective shell to be your greatest self. For Melba Burns, a midlife go-getter, it’s the uncanny pull of a shy, ingenious 10-year-old boy that cracks open her solo world.

Melba witnesses a terrible accident, which stops her in her high-achieving tracks. She quits her job and retreats into her beloved old farmhouse to live in simple peace. But peace and Melba’s new roommate, JoLee Garry, have never met. The buxom JoLee brings boyfriends, booze and layoffs into Melba’s household, not to mention an alcoholic husband who has kidnapped their son Matt. The desperate, half-broken Garry family trails a series of unexpected guests into Melba’s semi-retirement. Melba sees in Matt, almost too late, someone genuinely worth protecting.

Guest House explores the grace that flows from daring to intervene in a stranger’s suffering. It is a fast-paced tale set in Portland, Oregon and Atomic City, Idaho, the absolute center of nowhere. Readers who may have forgotten the power of living simply, and anyone in their middle years whose life has been hijacked by love, will fall under the spell of these all-too-human characters and the relationships which they destroy and forge.

“This being human is a guest house,” the poet Rumi says, “Every morning a new arrival…”

Click here to watch the video trailer, “The Inspiration for Guest House.”