Making Arrangements

Lang Eldridge, the protagonist in "Making Arrangements," is a cancer-surviving baby boomer whose 'perfect arrangements' go awry after her fit husband drops dead instead of her. A loner, her life has revolved around her husband and her granddaughter, and close friendships between women are something she doesn't quite understand. How do they become so familiar with each other, knowing where the spices are kept in each other's kitchens?

Prepared for her own death, Lang has arranged every detail of her husband's life without her, from her decadent caramel cakes with thick creamy icing in the freezer for his first birthday without her to love letters for Christmas, Father's Day, their anniversary...

Reeling as a widow, she struggles with impending foreclosure on her beloved historic family estate, a conniving tennis star son, a grammar-butchering fashion plate who decides they are best friends, an unlikely romance and a mute stray dog. She discovers the secret her husband carried to his grave could ruin her life. If she lets it.

A novel of funerals, flowers, friendship and forgiveness, themes of family, and its definition, are central to Making Arrangements. Can family be formed when there is no bloodline, and how does that happen? This story is told with "delightfully sassy writing with rich characters you'll want to slap " according to one reviewer.