An Unusual Arrangement: A Present Day Romance and its Special Ground Rules

Ginger Berry and Jon Moore take a shine to each other when she goes to work as a vacation replacement at the Cape Cod radio station where he hosts the morning talk show. But any budding romance faces two immediate challenges. He tells her he’s not the marrying kind, doesn’t want to be tied down. She tells him she’s on the picky side herself and hasn’t met anybody yet she’d want to be tied down to. The challenges play out against the distractions of a Cape Cod small-town summer. They visit Ginger’s high school friend who’s just joined the local sunbathing society and get involved in the effort to save the society’s beach from foreclosure by a money-grubbing banker. Jon stymies a bank robber trying to hijack his car with Ginger in it. Ginger marches in the July Fourth parade. They umpire a hilarious Police-Fire Department softball game. They drive to Boston to watch the surprising Red Sox at Fenway Park. Exploring the town’s neighborhoods on a tandem bike, they discover a teenaged harmonica virtuoso and are waylaid by three punks smoking marijuana and wielding a baseball bat. You’ll also meet talk show caller Roger Plumadore, who has either the town’s best memory or its best imagination, maybe both. Radio salesman Hal Sims, who “could sell tuxedos to penguins.” And Luvina Freitas, who used to date Jon and who introduces Ginger to Portuguese cooking. All done with lots of laughs and lots of suspense along the way. You’ll be especially intrigued by the “unusual arrangement” dictated by Jon’s and Ginger’s old-fashioned senses of morality.