Now That I Know You By Heart
On a remote island, a woman refurbishes a historic inn and restores her sense of self in the process.
Newly widowed Shelby Wright has left the Portland suburbs for a new life on Washington’s San Juan Island to fulfill her late husband’s dying wish. Running the shuttered Captain Merrick Inn where they’d honeymooned twenty years before is also a chance to prove Shelby can go it solo. Miles from home and her young adult son, Shelby is ready to finally acknowledge to herself that she is gay. But becoming the person she’s hidden away for so long isn’t going to be easy.
As Shelby renovates and rebrands the inn, she meets charismatic winemaker, Holly Caster. Their fast connection challenges Shelby to confront her emerging identity and lingering attachment not only to her husband, whom she loved, but to the best friend she left behind. When Shelby is welcomed by a supportive group of local queer women dubbed “the San Juan Sisters,” she’s on her way to making a professional venture—and a long-awaited personal quest—come true.
Both she and the inn may be in need of a little TLC, but Shelby is about to find love and purpose in the most unexpected places.
PRAISE
Poignant and beautifully introspective, Now That I Know You By Heart is a bildungsroman about guilt, coming out later in adulthood, and how it’s never too late to let go and be true. Hagstrom’s verdant descriptions and attention to the quieter, more tender moments of courtship truly bring Shelby, Holly, and the Captain Merrick Inn to vivid, unrestrained life.
— Tara Tai, author of Single Player