On Mystic Lake Paperback - 2004

First line

Rain fell like tiny silver teardrops from the tired sky.

From the jacket flap

Annie Colwater's husband has just confessed that he's in love with a younger woman. Devastated, Annie retreats to the small town where she grew up. There, she is reunited with her first love, Nick Delacroix, a recent widower who is unable to cope with his silent, emotionally scarred young daughter. Together, the three of them begin to heal. But just when Annie believes she's been given a second chance at happiness, her world is turned upside down again, and she is forced to make a choice that no woman in love should ever have to make. . . .

Excerpt

From Part One

The true voyage of self-discovery
lies not in seeking new landscapes
but in having new eyes.
--Marcel Proust

Chapter One


Rain fell like tiny silver teardrops from the tired sky. Somewhere behind a bank of clouds lay the sun, too weak to cast a shadow on the ground below.
        
It was March, the doldrums of the year, still and quiet and gray, but the wind had already begun to warm, bringing with it the promise of spring. Trees that only last week had been naked and brittle seemed to have grown six inches over the span of a single, moonless night, and sometimes, if the sunlight hit a limb just so, you could see the red bud of new life stirring at the tips of the crackly brown bark. Any day, the hills behind Malibu would blossom, and for a few short weeks this would be the prettiest place on Earth.
        
Like the plants and animals, the children of Southern California sensed the coming of the sun. They had begun to dream of ice cream and popsicles and last year's cutoffs. Even determined city dwellers, who lived in glass and concrete high-rises in places with pretentious names like Century City, found themselves veering into the nursery aisles of their local supermarkets. Small, potted geraniums began appearing in the metal shopping carts, alongside the sun-dried tomatoes and the bottles of Evian water.
        
For nineteen years, Annie Colwater had awaited spring with the breathless anticipation of a young girl at her first dance. She ordered bulbs from distant lands and shopped for hand-painted ceramic pots to hold her favorite annuals.
        
But now, all she felt was dread, and a vague, formless panic. After today, nothing in her well-ordered life would remain the same, and she was not a woman who liked the sharp, jagged edges of change. She preferred things to run smoothly, down the middle of the road. That was where she felt safest--in the center of the ordinary, with her family gathered close around her.
        
Wife.
        
Mother.
        
These were the roles that defined her, that gave her life meaning. It was what she'd always been, and now, as she warily approached her fortieth birthday, it was all she could remember ever wanting to be. She had gotten married right after college and been pregnant within that same year. Her husband and daughter were her anchors; without Blake and Natalie, she had often thought that she might float out to sea, a ship without captain or destination.
        
But what did a mother do when her only child left home?
        
She shifted uneasily in the front seat of the Cadillac. The clothes she'd chosen with such care this morning, navy wool pants and a pale rose silk blouse, felt wrong. Usually she could take refuge in fashionable camouflage, by pretending to be a woman she wasn't. Designer clothes and carefully applied makeup could make her look like the high-powered corporate wife she was supposed to be. But not today. Today, the waist-length brown hair she'd drawn back from her face in a chignon--the way her husband liked it, the way she always wore it--was giving her a headache.
        
She drummed her manicured fingernails on the armrest and glanced at Blake, who was settled comfortably in the driver's seat. He looked completely relaxed, as if this were a normal afternoon instead of the day their seventeen-year-old daughter was leaving for London.
        
It was childish to be so scared, she knew that, but knowing didn't ease the pain. When Natalie had first told them that she wanted to graduate early and spend her last quarter in London, Annie had been proud of her daughter's independence. It was the sort of thing that seniors at the expensive prep school often did, and precisely the sophisticated sort of adventure Annie had wanted for her daughter.
        
Annie herself would never have had the courage for so bold a move--not at seventeen, not even now at thirty-nine. Travel had always intimidated her. Although she loved seeing new places and meeting new people, she always felt an underlying discomfort when she left home.
        
She knew this weakness was a remnant of her youth, a normal by-product of the tragedy that had tainted her childhood, but understanding her fear didn't alleviate it. On every family vacation, Annie had suffered from nightmares--dark, twisted visions in which she was alone in a foreign land without money or direction. Lost, she wandered through unfamiliar streets, searching for the family that was her safety net, until, finally, sobbing in her sleep, she awoke. Then, she would curl into her husband's sleeping body and, at last, relax.
        
She had been proud of her daughter's independence and courage in choosing to go all the way to England by herself, but she hadn't realized how hard it would be to watch Natalie leave. They'd been like best friends, she and her daughter, ever since Natalie had emerged from the angry, sullen rubble of the early teen years. They'd had hard times, sure, and fights and hurt feelings, and they'd each said things that shouldn't have been said, but all that had only made their bond stronger. They were a unit, the "girls" in a household where the only man worked eighty hours a week and sometimes went whole days without remembering to smile.
        
She stared out the car window. The concrete-encrusted canyons of downtown Los Angeles were a blur of high-rise buildings, graffiti, and neon lights that left streaking reflections in the misty rain. They were getting closer and closer to the airport.
        
She reached for her husband, touched the pale blue cashmere of his sleeve. "Let's fly to London with Nana and get her settled with her host family. I know--"
        
"Mom," Natalie said sharply from the backseat. "Get real. It would be, like, so humiliating for you to show up."
        
Annie drew her hand back and plucked a tiny lint ball from her expensive wool pants. "It was just an idea," she said softly. "Your dad has been trying to get me to England for ages. I thought . . . maybe we could go now."
        
Blake gave her a quick look, one she couldn't quite read. "I haven't mentioned England in years." Then he muttered something about the traffic and slammed his hand on the horn.

Media reviews

“Superb . . . I’ll heartily recommend On Mystic Lake to any woman . . . who demands that a story leave her in a satisfied glow.”
—The Washington Post Book World

“A LUMINESCENT STORY . . . Hannah touches the deepest, most tender corners of our hearts.”
—TAMI HOAG

“MARVELOUS . . . A TOUCHING LOVE STORY . . . You know a book is a winner when you devour it in one evening and hope there’s a sequel. . . . This page-turner has enough twists and turns to keep the reader up until the wee hours of the morning.”
—USA Today

“EXCELLENT . . . ON MYSTIC LAKE IS AN EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE YOU WON’T SOON FORGET.”
—Rocky Mountain News

“ON MYSTIC LAKE
PROPELS READERS FORWARD TO THE FINAL CHAPTER.”
—The Seattle Times

“A big, beautiful story of love, family, and second chances. Kristin Hannah has written the Must-Read Book of the Year!”
—SUSAN ELIZABETH PHILLIPS
Author of Ain’t She Sweet?

“The phrase ‘page-turner’ is redefined. . . . A clean, deep thrust into the reader’s heart . . . Unfolds tenderly and with suspense . . . In Hannah’s world, nothing can be taken for granted and triumph must be earned, with hard work, truthful reckoning, and tears.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Brimming with the kinds of emotions that tug at the heartstrings . . . Hannah’s writing is all her romance fans have come to expect. It is as rich as the fertile Pacific Northwest rain forest she writes about and as soft around the edges as the fog on Mystic Lake.”
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer

“On Mystic Lake not only touches the heart, it helps redefine women’s fiction for a new generation of readers. A haunting, evocative tale of love lost and found. A glowing, deeply felt tribute to the triumphant possibilities of self-discovery, personal growth, and change.”
—JAYNE ANN KRENTZ

“ON MYSTIC LAKE IS SIMPLY WONDERFUL!”
—TAMI HOAG

“Hannah is observant and can turn a phrase. . . . [She] is superb at delving into her main characters’ psyches and delineating nuances of feeling. . . . I’m sure there isn’t a woman over the age of thirty-five who couldn’t identify with Annie’s sense of loss and abandonment, or share in her triumph as she regains her self-confidence and an identity separate from that of wife and mother. These jaded eyes actually got misty at the passages in which six-year-old Izzy implores her dead mother’s spirit to wait for her, my skin crawled along with Nick’s as he jitters through the early stages of his recovery, and I even felt compassion for the inability of Blake the cad to care about anyone but himself.”
—The Washington Post Book World

“On Mystic Lake is rich and dark, ripe with dense, smoky emotion, yet ultimately sweet at heart. . . . [The novel] is sentimental in the best sense, and like many of Hannah’s earlier books, cathartic. She can make you cry, and in the end, offer a quiet resolution based on real growth.”
—Contra-Costa Times

“A beautiful novel, heartbreaking and tender . . . Hannah writes of love with compassion and conviction, her characters so alive and dear you can’t bear to see the novel end.”
—LUANNE RICE

“A BEAUTIFULLY SIMPLE, DEEPLY COMPASSIONATE STORY.”
—DIANA GABALDON

“Kristin Hannah breaks new ground in her powerful exploration of a woman rediscovering herself in On Mystic Lake. . . . Hannah has a signature talent for drawing deep into the hearts of her story’s characters. These are real problems, and Hannah is a master portrayer of the human spirit. On Mystic Lake is too good to share—so buy extras!”
—BookPage

“A shining triumph that is not to be missed . . . Hauntingly beautiful and richly emotional.”
—Romantic Times

“An extremely satisfying, insightful, and emotional tale. Fans of La Vyrle Spencer will certainly enjoy this moving book.”
—Booklist

“Highly recommended . . . Fans of Anne Rivers Siddons will devour this.”
—Library Journal

Kristin Hannah
“writes of love with compassion and conviction.”
—LUANNE RICE
Author of Home Fires

“Remember the last time you finished a fabulous book and made your best friend read it? Get ready to feel that way again.”
—SUSAN ELIZABETH PHILLIPS
Author of Dream a Little Dream