Set adrift when her mother sells the salon that has been a neighborhood institution for decades, Nora Rolvaag takes a camping trip, intending to do nothing more than roast marshmallows over an open fire and under a starry sky. Two chance encounters, however, will have enormous consequences, and her getaway turns out to be more of a retreat from her daily life than she ever imagined. But Nora is the do-or-die-trying daughter of Patty Jane, who now must embrace the House of Curl s slogan: Expect the Unexpected.
With her trademark wit and warmth, Lorna Landvik follows Nora and an ever-growing cast of characters between city and wooded retreat, Minnesota and Norway, a past that s secret and a future that s promising, but uncertain. Responding to a mysterious letter with a Norwegian postmark, Nora s grandmother Ione travels to her native land to tend to a dying cousin and her husband two people who played a painful, pivotal role in her past. Nora accompanies her and is surprised by her grandmother s long-ago love story but even more surprised by the beginning of her own.
A book about making new beginnings out of old endings, Once in a Blue Moon Lodge invites readers to check in, set down their baggage, and spend time with the kind of people who understand that while they can t control all that life throws at them, they can at least control how they catch it. And as anyone who has stopped in at Patty Jane s House of Curl will tell you: you re in for a rollicking good time with characters whose strengths, foibles, and choices will have you laughing and crying. Hankerings for coffee and gingerbread cookies may also be experienced.