Plan B

When Plan A is no longer an option... Things were going just fine in the career department - that was until the recession hit - then all bets were off. Jenn Postman, a 27-year-old lifestyle writer for a B-list women's magazine had never thought that such mundane things as recessions or inflation or job loss could hurt her until the day her world comes crashing down when the magazine folds. Her father, on the phone from Cork Harbour, the small, seaside town where she grew up, asks astutely, "What's Plan B?" And Jenn finds herself back in her childhood home, a boomerang kid, working at the only job she can get- in her father's now-booming gourmet grocery business. Her life changes the day someone finds a tarantula in the banana shipment. While the customers and staff are all busy trying to rid the store of the offending creature, Jenn finds a cryptic note between the bags of premium Costa Rican coffee she's unpacking. It's from "Juan" who says he needs help - Jenn becomes obsessed with this note, and after being aided and abetted by her old friend Faith, a stifled, small-town obstetrician's wife living vicariously through Jenn, decides to travel to Costa Rica to find Juan. When your life hits a major road block, sometimes your Plan B is more than a detour - it just might be your real life. A magazine writer to the end, Jenn writes her wryly funny story as a series of magazine-type articles beginning with "Change your Shoes, Change your Life," through "Avoiding a Fate Worse than Death: Or Why it's Better to be a Bag Lady Than Move Home to your Parents' Basement," as well as "Why Everyone is Blogging and Why You Should Consider Stepping Away from the Computer," until she is finally faced with "When Life Gives You Reality, it's Time to 'Get Real."