Only Beautiful Things

Coming January 5, 2027

“I have not gone through a divorce. I have not lost my job. This is a choice versus a reaction. Pete and I have never been apart for this length of time, and it makes me a little nervous. I’ve desired, yet avoided, doing something like this for years. Now I have to adjust to being alone, something I usually finish just in time to adjust back to not being alone. This time I’m truly stepping outside of my everyday life, outside the circle I trace over and over again, where time passes more quickly each year—another tax season, another birthday, another winter—like I’m standing in one place and slowly turning clockwise, year after year. I had to step outside of it, just to know I still could.”

It is mid-January, not a popular time of year for a Northern California beach town. At fifty-seven, Parker has packed up ten years of notebooks she plans to shape into her next book, left her husband and home behind, and is heading to a small cottage on the coast. Her plan is to stay for thirty-one days.

In this quiet landscape, Parker becomes captivated by an elegant and self-contained older woman, and drawn to a calming, gentle man who appears to be her age. She sifts through her notebooks and her past—travel, dreams, art, books, music, joy, fear, grief, and gratitude. As her mind finally settles, she questions whether she needs to write this book at all.