Introduction

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A darkly comic and warm-hearted novel about an old man on a cross-country mission to reunite with his high school crush—bringing together his adult daughter, two orphaned kids, and a cat who can predict death—by the beloved author of Rabbit Cake and Unlikely Animals

“A miraculous novel—an actual and spiritual road trip you won’t forget.”—John Irving

AN NPR AND LIT HUB BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

At sixty-three years old, million-dollar lottery winner PJ Halliday would be the luckiest man in Pondville, Massachusetts, if it weren’t for the tragedies of his life: the sudden death of his eldest daughter and the way his marriage fell apart after that. Since then, PJ spends both his money and his time at the bar, and he probably doesn’t have much time left—he’s had three heart attacks already.

But when PJ reads the obituary of his old romantic rival, he realizes his high school sweetheart, Michelle Cobb, is finally single again. Filled with a new enthusiasm for life, PJ decides he’s going to drive across the country to the Tender Hearts Retirement Community in Arizona to win Michelle back.

Before PJ can hit the road, tragedy strikes Pondville, leaving PJ the sudden guardian of his estranged brother’s grandchildren. Anyone else would be deterred from the planned trip, but PJ figures the orphaned kids might benefit from getting out of town. PJ also thinks he can ask Sophie, his adult daughter who’s adrift in her twenties, to come along to babysit. And there’s one more surprise addition to the roster: Pancakes, a former nursing home therapy cat with a knack of predicting death, who recently turned up outside PJ’s home.

This could be the second chance PJ has long hoped for—a fresh shot at love and parenting—but does he have the strength to do both those things again? It’s very possible his heart can’t take it.

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Excerpt

Chapter 2

Dr. Gust’s obituary ran in The South Coast Daily Sun two weeks later, on May 3, 2014, to be exact, yet another day that PJ Halliday, a sixty-three-year-old Pondville resident, would wake up, as usual, all alone in his house full of shit. That morning, PJ had no clue, not the slightest inkling, how much his life was about to change. PJ Halliday didn’t read Dr. Gust’s obituary, even though it was right next to another obituary that day—the one that would change his life—and all of it would be connected in the end. PJ didn’t know Dr. Gust, so it wouldn’t have meant much to him, that the man died slumped over his desk, using the keyboard as a final pillow. During the autopsy, an extraordinary amount of cat hair would be found in Dr. Gust’s nostrils, sucked in off the keyboard during Dr. Gust’s last breaths. That wasn’t in the newspaper, of course; those kinds of details never make it into obituaries. But again, PJ Halliday didn’t read Dr. Gust’s obituary. It was another obituary, the one printed right next to it, that would catch PJ’s attention and set him off on a new life course.

But first, the day had begun ordinarily enough: Still wearing his pajamas, PJ put on his ratty slippers and went downstairs to the kitchen, where he was greeted by his piles. Piles and piles and piles.

“Good morning, house,” PJ said.

Good morning, PJ, the house said back. A house will always talk to you, if you live there long enough. PJ had lived in that house for nearly forty years out of his sixty-three, a blue house on the corner of Clear Pond Road with a white front porch.

PJ sat down at his kitchen table to count out his pills. As he swallowed, he looked up at the wooden sign by the telephone, which read A MESSY HOUSE IS A SIGN OF A HAPPY FAMILY.PJ had bought it at Nifty Gifts & Thrifts, the shop next to the post office. He thought it was a good joke, the bit about a happy family, since the house was empty. But his family had once all lived there, happily, or happily enough, and so the sign was probably PJ’s most prized possession, if he had to pick. A reminder of how things had once been.

Then again, his house was chock-a-block full of old memories, so there would be a few other contenders for prized possession: the Sharpie drawing on the living-room wall, for example, a relic from one of his daughters’ toddlerhoods, never painted over. Or his ex- wife’s wedding dress that still hung in the closet, badly yellowed. The toys in the attic. Or his antique car in the garage.

Upstairs were his kids’ rooms, rooms he never dared to go into, because the sadness might crush him. His younger daughter, Sophie, had cleared out most of her things, so it was the emptiness that would hurt. Sophie was all grown-up, twenty-six, and she didn’t live far, only twenty minutes away, down in New Bedford. He saw her a few times a month. She was doing all right. He was lucky to have her so close by, even if Sophie wasn’t always happy to see him.

It was the room at the end of the hall that really killed PJ. In there was Kate’s stuff. His older daughter, his firstborn. Kate’s room was the exact same as it had been, the night fifteen years ago she had gone to prom and hadn’t come home. Her twin bed, her piggy bank, her posters of half-naked men. Fifteen years later, Kate’s softball hat was still hanging on her doorknob outside the room. Maybe that was PJ’s most prized possession: the blue hat on the door.

“Hello, hat,” he said to it sometimes.

I miss her too, the hat said back. I wish . . . the hat always continued, but it never finished the sentence. A hat doesn’t know what to wish for.

PJ knew most of what he owned was junk; he didn’t think he was sitting on a pile of treasure. He had empty jars on the counters, mail stacked up so high on the table you couldn’t see the tablecloth any-more. He knew it had cheery sunflowers on it. His ex-wife loved sunflowers, and PJ liked to think about the tablecloth hidden under-neath the mail, but he could never get the strength up to unearth it. And PJ had more crap, spread around, everywhere. He had shoe-boxes full of old letters under his bed. There were stacks of books on the floor, books that couldn’t fit on the bookshelves. He slept next to a heap of laundry, some of it clean. There were beer cans lined up by the sink. And in the upstairs bathroom, there were still four toothbrushes in the cabinet. Proof that there had once been other people in this house.

After his pills, PJ got up from the kitchen table and made a cup of coffee in the Keurig. “Piece of shit,” PJ grumbled, because he had to press every button on it before it started to boil water. He hated the machine, how it made one single sad cup of coffee, but he was not allowed to be at his ex- wife’s house until eight A.M. earliest, and had to be there no later than nine. That was the deal. So, PJ had his cup of coffee first, before going back upstairs and putting on a stretched-out T-shirt with beige cargo shorts. He was a large man, overweight, lots of hair on his chest, his long beard was unkempt, his gray hair was down to his shoulders. He wasn’t exactly George Clooney, but women always said he had nice eyes. They were green. Women liked him. They always had. They liked that he read poetry and listened to classical music, could play the piano, but they also liked that he loved rock music, and even the new stuff the young people played in the bar. Women liked that PJ knew about cars. They liked that he could tell a good joke, and that he wasn’t a snob. They liked that he loved animals. They didn’t mind how flatulent he was. They liked his sensitive nature.

PJ slipped on his Birkenstock sandals and his sweater, the zip-up with the polar bears stitched onto it. “If you want to hear a sad story, read about the polar bears,” PJ would say to the women at the bar sometimes. He blamed the plight of the polar bear for one of his heart attacks. It was the documentary that had started the chest pain, he told his doctor. The bears were drowning, had the doc heard that? Habitat loss.

“Yes, I’ve heard that too,” his doctor had said. “But I think it’s your diet and lifestyle that’s causing your heart trouble.”

“Genetics,” PJ said to that. “Nothing I can do about genetics.”

The doctor had given him statins and a pamphlet about diet and exercise.

At 8:05, PJ was out the door for his morning walk. Walking used to be part of his job as a postman, and he walked everywhere still. He’d always gotten plenty of exercise, he was just big- boned, but doctors never listen when you talk about big bones. PJ didn’t bother to lock the front door behind him when he went out. People rarely locked their doors in Pondville, unless they were leaving on a long vacation, and that morning, PJ had no plans to go anywhere. Out on the street, PJ waved hello to his neighbor Kellyanne Thomas, headed to work at the cranberry juice factory headquarters. She was in corporate, and PJ felt terrible for her, having to wear a monkey suit to work. PJ used to hate his own work uniform, the navy polyester pants and light- blue shirt, but he had been fired from his mail-carrier job a long time ago. “How are you, PJ?” Kellyanne Thomas called out to him from her driveway.

“We’re one day closer to the end!” he called back. “The end of what?” she asked.

“Our time together! But I’ve loved every minute.”

She laughed. “Well, I have too, PJ.”

“You’re looking like a million bucks today, Kellyanne,” PJ said, although he didn’t like the suit. “Don’t let the boss get you down.”

“Oh, thank you,” she said, blushing. “And I suppose you would know what a million bucks looks like!”

PJ chuckled and waved as she drove off. He knew she would smile all the way to work. He liked to make people smile.

It had been $1.5 million, actually, not a million bucks, that PJ had won. Everyone in Pondville knew he had won big in the scratch-off lottery tickets sold at the gas station, ten years ago. He didn’t even remember buying the ticket, he’d been so drunk when he bought it. It had been good timing, he had really needed the money, had been about to lose his house, his wife already halfway out the door. But even after the lottery winnings, his wife had left anyway. People might have considered PJ the luckiest man in Pondville, if everyone didn’t know how much he’d already lost.

PJ’s sandals smacked the pavement. It was fifty-three degrees, the very beginning of spring in New England, the third day of May. It wasn’t really sandal weather yet, but it was a short walk.

Every morning, after he had his first cup of coffee alone, PJ walked the ten houses down to his ex-wife’s house, where Ivy lived with her boyfriend, the retired judge Fred Sharp, in their home right on the pond. It had been Fred’s second home, until Fred moved down full-time so he and Ivy could get serious. He’d taken a big pay cut with the move, too, changing to a district court, but he’d still made a good living, and now he was ready to retire. Fred was also a world-class bird-watcher, and he was taking Ivy on a bird-watching trip, leaving tomorrow. It wasn’t just a weekend trip, either; they’d be gone for four entire months to Alaska, which seemed about as far away as they could go. PJ had been steeling himself for it. He walked up the gravel path to their house with heavy legs.

Ivy opened the door; she’d been waiting for him. PJ’s ex-wife was still as beautiful as she had been the day he met her. She had just turned sixty-two. She still dyed her hair Marilyn Monroe blond, and she wore red lipstick, lots of jewelry, and colorful ponchos she knit herself. She had been an art teacher at the high school.

“It’s not safe to leave me alone,” PJ told her, giving his ex-wife his best puppy-dog eyes when he came in, but Ivy only shook her head. She’d explained this before. She and Fred had both retired and it was time for them to travel.

“Live your life,” PJ muttered. “Yes, forget all about me. Leave me here to die.”

“No one’s leaving you to die,” Ivy said, rolling her eyes. “We’re only gone four months. May until end of August.”

“Keep taking your medication,” Fred reminded PJ when he came downstairs to join them. Fred was freshly showered and dressed in a V-neck cashmere sweater. “And lay off the booze.”

“Yeah, yeah.” PJ plopped himself down at the table and picked up the newspaper Ivy had laid out. It was in tatters, because Ivy had cut it up for him before he’d even arrived at her house. PJ wanted to read the news, stay up to date, but he loved animals and children—they were the jewels of the world—and he did not want to hear about bad things happening to them. He was too sensitive. His heart couldn’t take it. He’d already had three heart attacks. A fourth might be the one to do it.

So, every morning, after the second heart attack, Ivy had cut up the paper, took out the cruelty to animals or children. She did this back when they lived in the same house together and continued even after she gave up on their marriage and moved out. At first, after she’d left him, Ivy would leave the chopped-up newspaper on his doorstep, but eventually she’d invited PJ over to the house on the pond for breakfast. She still loved PJ, in a different way from before, but she did love him. She wanted him to be all right.

That first breakfast was seven years ago, and now, every morning, PJ took a seat in the clean, yellow-floral-wallpapered kitchen with Ivy and her boyfriend. Ivy would make cinnamon buns or omelets, scones or pancakes, a frittata once in a while. No bacon for PJ, because PJ had accidentally read an article about the factory farming of pigs once, because sometimes Ivy didn’t get all the bad news. There was so much of it, bad news, in the paper. She was bound to make mistakes, there was always something she missed.

It was turkey bacon only for Fred, always following a heart-healthy diet. Fred also didn’t drink. He exercised. He was a lover of wildlife. A big reader. He was the first Black judge to win the prestigious Noble and Fair Justice Award, and he was known for giving second chances to people who deserved them. He never lost his cool. PJ had tried to hate Fred for stealing his wife, but it wasn’t easy to hate Fred, even if he was a dweeb much of the time, always pointing out woodpeckers and titmice, never making dirty jokes, only sometimes laughing at PJ’s. “Ivy’s Diner,” Fred would call the morning meal, patting his stomach, and he would also clean the kitchen afterward, clear the plates and fill the dishwasher and wipe down the counters.

“Apple polisher,” PJ would call him, but Fred didn’t mind. He did like Ivy’s apples and wanted to polish them.

That morning, their last breakfast together before Alaska, Ivy had cut a huge hole in the front page of both newspapers. They had two papers delivered every morning: one for PJ, one for Fred and Ivy to share. They were keeping The South Coast Daily Sun in business; most people had made the switch to The Boston Globe, or even The New York Times, but PJ was resistant to change, and Ivy catered to him. She hardly ever cut up both papers, though, so whatever the front-page news was that morning, it was something extremely upsetting. PJ tried not to think how bad it could be, but imagined Fred and Ivy must have been discussing it before he arrived, and maybe that was why Ivy hadn’t made much of a spread. It was simple scrambled eggs and toast, but when PJ took a bite, he found the bread buttered to perfection. PJ reminded himself not to underestimate the simple things. “I hope you always appreciate what you have there,” he told Fred, pointing to Ivy puttering around the kitchen.

“I do appreciate her, of course I do,” Fred said. “Anyone can see I appreciate her.”

“Do you appreciate me, PJ?” Ivy asked, turning around to face her ex-husband. “Because I sometimes wonder.”

“I haven’t had sex with another woman since you left me. Not once in eight years. How is that not appreciation?”

Ivy laughed and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Okay, fine. Me and Francie Hubble had our thing.”

“What about Patricia?”

“Who’s that?”

“The woman who owns the Nifty Gifts.”

“Oh. Well, yes. A few times. I didn’t know you were keeping tabs.”

“Will you two stop flirting,” Fred said. “I’m right here.”

“Jesus Christ, Fred,” Ivy said. “No one’s flirting.”

“I’m always flirting,” PJ said. “I’ll win her back, someday. You’ll see. Maybe once she gets tired of your performance problems in the bedroom.” PJ had seen the Viagra in Fred’s bedside drawers, one day when he was snooping around upstairs.

“Ha,” Ivy said. “Pot calling kettle.”

“That’s enough of that,” Fred said. “But you make a good point, PJ, we should appreciate each other. That’s what this trip is about: appreciation. Appreciation for each other, and a new adventure. And birds, of course. New birds to see.”

“Here’s to adventure then. And birds,” PJ said, lifting his glass of OJ, even though he wanted to beg them not to go. They could appreciate each other at home. There were plenty of birds right outside.

“Yes, cheers to birds,” Fred said, lifting his coffee cup.

“Cheers to birds,” Ivy muttered, with less enthusiasm. But PJ was always cheersing to something, and Ivy had suffered through so many years of it.

“Hey, did you ever think of inviting me?” PJ asked. “I like birds. I could chaperone. I’ve never been to Alaska.” PJ had never been outside New England, except once, to Vietnam and back home again, plus a training camp in Bastrop, Texas, which wasn’t much of a place.

“We did discuss it, actually,” Ivy said. “We discussed asking you and Sophie to come, too, but ultimately—”

“I’d ruin your time, you think?”

“We knew you’d never go, PJ. We know you don’t like leaving Pondville. You don’t like to fly. You never even wanted to go on vacation when the kids were little.”

“We didn’t have the money back then for vacation. You remember how it was—” he started, even though he knew Ivy didn’t like to remember. She almost never wanted to talk about their memories of Kate, not even the happy ones.

“Oh, admit it, you’re a homebody, Paul,” Fred said, sensing PJ was about to try to go down memory lane again. Fred always called PJ by his first name, even though no one else did. “You’re a homebody, and Alaska’s really far. A man like you doesn’t change, Paul. You like the things you like, and you like Pondville. You’re not going to turn into Ernest Shackleton overnight.”

“I might have gone if I’d been invited,” PJ said, huffy, and couldn’t remember who Ernest Shackleton was. But it was true Pondville was home, and he was comfortable at home. The mayor of Pondville, they called him at the Wild Orchid, because PJ knew everyone at the bar, and remembered their names. Pondville didn’t have a real mayor, only a board of selectmen. Bastards, all three of them, according to PJ. But he liked everyone else, mostly, and everyone else liked him. Everyone at the post office had been so sorry when they’d had to fire him. And after PJ won the lottery, his popularity only increased. He’d given money to the church, the farm co-op, the Lions Club. He didn’t even belong to the church, the farm co-op, or the Lions Club. He purchased a new playground for the nursery school. If a friend needed money, PJ wrote a check. Ivy and Fred and his daughter Sophie would never take his money, but everyone else in town was glad for a handout. PJ regularly covered a round for the entire bar, sometimes two, except for his estranged brother, Chip, who could pay his own effin’ tab as far as PJ was concerned, but Chip had died a year and a half ago anyway. Chip wasn’t a problem anymore. Yes, PJ was a popular guy in Pondville. He’d never had a desire to leave, until Ivy and Fred had planned this trip to Alaska without him. He would have liked to have been invited.

There was another reason PJ rarely left Pondville in recent years, but PJ didn’t like to talk about the DUIs. Why he had to walk everywhere in town he wanted to go. A decade ago, over the span of two years, he’d been pulled over for drunk driving twice, and rolled his car the third time. PJ had also driven the mail truck into Assawompset Pond before that, but he hadn’t been breathalyzed for that accident. He had only been fired, his uniform and pension taken away. He had stopped leaving Pondville, for almost any reason, except to go to the Boston hospital during his heart attacks. He walked to the bar, and he walked home.

“We’ll take you on the next trip, PJ, I promise,” Ivy said. “We’ll all go to Vermont or something. But now I need to go finish packing for Alaska; I just know I’m going to forget something we need. But you boys enjoy your breakfast. Take your time.”

Fred pointed to his cheek for a kiss, and Ivy gave him one, and then she bent and gave a peck to PJ too. Both men smiled and watched her walk upstairs before they returned to their newspapers. PJ sniffed and lifted his paper to cover his face. He was tearing up. This was their final breakfast together before the trip. This was the last supper, and Ivy was already headed upstairs to pack as if she didn’t even care.

PJ tried to focus on the newspaper. There was a new bakery opening up on Main Street; gas prices were higher than they used to be. There was a war, somewhere really, really far away, and nothing mentioned about children dying in it, so Ivy had left it in. But of course, there were children dying in that war. Horrible things happen around the world every day. PJ didn’t forget that, as hard as he tried to. And then there was that huge hole in the front page of both newspapers. It must have involved children, whatever it was Ivy had removed from both papers, and it must have been bad. He tried not to think about it.

By the time PJ got to the obituaries, he was about to go home for his post-breakfast nap, after which he’d walk the mile down to the Wild Orchid Bar for the rest of the day. It was a Hawaiian-themed place. Hank and Moose were always there by eleven, ready to joke around all afternoon and into the night, watch sports, play darts. It filled the time. PJ had a lot of time.

Yes, PJ was about to close the newspaper and get going on the day and everything would have been so different if he had. He might have even gotten back home in time to answer a phone call from a social worker who was dialing him right then. If he had taken that phone call, everything might have been different: it would have meant Fred and Ivy heard about it before they left for their trip, and they would have certainly pushed the social workers to consider other options, probably would have delayed their trip to Alaska. But PJ was blissfully unaware of the tragedy that had struck the Meeklin family two days before, and he didn’t know anything about their connection to him. The last name didn’t ring any bells for Ivy when she saw it in the paper that morning, and no one had any idea that a social worker with the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families was attempting to reach PJ at his house.

In his ignorance of what was to come, PJ lingered on the last page of the paper, and that was when he noticed the obituary for an old friend. He hadn’t seen the man in forty-five years, but he recognized him in the picture. Bottlecap glasses and a doughy face. Yes, he looked nearly the same, it was remarkable. That was Gene Bartlett. As teenagers, PJ and Gene had both been lifeguards at the beach at Clear Pond, and they used to use their keys to unlock the front gate late at night and take girls to look for the mermaid. Local legend had it, you could only see the mermaid of Clear Pond after dark, when she came out of the water to sleep on the raft at night. It was how both Gene and PJ had lost their virginity, taking girls to the beach to look for the mermaid.

Four and a half decades later, PJ had still never seen the mermaid, lumped in among so many other life disappointments, and now, apparently, his old friend Gene was dead.

The obituary read:

Gene Bartlett Sr., 63, husband of 41 years this September of Michelle (Cobb) Bartlett, passed away on Friday, following a brief illness. Born in Pondville, Mass., Gene was a proud 1969 graduate of Pondville High. After Gene met and fell in love with Michelle, the couple moved to Los Angeles to pursue Michelle’s acting career, and Gene found success in LA real estate. They lived a comfortable life. For the past decade, they enjoyed retirement by traveling the country in an RV, seeing sights such as the Grand Canyon, the Badlands in South Dakota, the Space Needle in Seattle and eating one too many beignets in New Orleans, before settling down last year in a two- bedroom condo in Tucson, Ariz. Gene is survived by his darling Michelle and his—

PJ stopped reading at that point. “Michelle Cobb,” he said, and whistled, remembering how good Michelle had once looked in this one orange sweater. PJ wished there was a photograph of Michelle that went along with the obituary, but it was only Gene, looking like the same goober he was forty- five years ago. Michelle Cobb had been the other love of PJ’s life, besides Ivy, but then PJ had gone away to war, and he’d never seen her again. Michelle Cobb was back on the market. Wasn’t this a change of fortune! Michelle was likely still living at the two-bedroom condo in the Tender Hearts Retirement Community, because that’s where the obituary said you could send flowers in memory of Gene Bartlett. The retirement community was in Tucson.

PJ excused himself from the breakfast table and went upstairs to Fred’s office to use his computer. The room held a small desk and a computer but was mostly full of cardboard filing boxes, so many boxes you barely had room to move in the swivel chair. PJ assumed they were old court case files, and wondered why Fred didn’t just toss them. PJ sat down at the desk and typed into Google: Florist, Tucson. He took out his credit card and sent a dozen red roses, and also a small teddy bear. The Valentine’s Day package, it was called. My deepest condolences, he asked the florist to write on the card. All my love from Pondville, he signed it. Your old friend, PJ Halliday.

This was the beginning of something wonderful, PJ was sure of it. And then there was a tap-tap-tap on the door, and Fred pushed his way in. Fred didn’t ask what PJ was doing on the computer, because PJ used that computer all the time, he didn’t have internet at home.

“Hey, Paul, can I show you something?” Fred asked.

“It better not be disgusting, Fred,” PJ said, because Fred had bunions on his feet, and that’s when Fred pulled out a ring. It was a sensible size, the diamond, which PJ was grateful for. The diamond on the engagement ring he’d given Ivy, all those years ago, was so small it had probably worn away to a grain of sand sitting unworn in her jewelry box.

“I wanted to ask for your blessing,” Fred said. “And I wanted to ask if you’d be my best man. Ours is a strange friendship but it’s—”

PJ didn’t let him finish, because he grabbed him by the face and kissed Fred on the mouth. He was overjoyed to be asked for his blessing, and that Fred wanted him around for the wedding, wanted him to play a major part. “Of course, I will, buddy. And I’ll start planning our big bachelor party.”

“No party,” Fred said, being a dweeb again.

“What are you two doing in there?” Ivy asked, because the office door was closed. “Freddy, you have to finish packing. PJ, what’s this about a party? If you get arrested while we’re gone, there’s going to be no one to bail you out. Remember we won’t have cell service most of the trip.”

“I remember,” PJ said. “I won’t be able to call.” This was the worst part; he wouldn’t even be able to talk to them. They were leaving him here to die of loneliness.

“So, no parties. No bad behavior. Call Sophie if you get into any trouble. Don’t take advantage of your daughter; you should do your own grocery shopping, but I don’t want you rotting in jail.”

“No bad behavior. Don’t call Sophie unless I need to,” PJ promised, and smiled at Ivy. It was all PJ could do not to spill the beans, make Fred get on one knee right there among the cardboard boxes, but somehow PJ kept his mouth shut. Good ol’ Freddy wanted to propose on their trip to Alaska, of course he did, that would be more romantic than asking in Pondville in front of her ex-husband. PJ couldn’t believe it: his ex-wife and his best friend were getting married! They were heading to Alaska tomorrow, and when they came back there would be a wedding. A big one, PJ hoped. He would be the best man. PJ and Ivy’s daughter Sophie would be the maid of honor. It would be open bar.

“I’ll also need a plus-one on the invite,” he whispered to Fred, thinking of Michelle Cobb and how wowed she would be, once she saw the flower arrangement, the teddy bear. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the Publisher - Added by Pauline

1. How does PJ Halliday's past, including the estrangement with his daughter and the collapse of his marriage, influence his decisions throughout the story? 

2. How does winning the lottery affect PJ's life, and how does it affect his relationships? 

3. Discuss the significance of PJ's decision to drive across the country to reunite with Michelle Cobb. What does this journey signify for him? 

4. What is the importance of Pancakes in the story? How does the cat's presence affect PJ and the other characters? 

5. Do you think PJ would’ve been able to make the trip if he hadn’t received guardianship over Ollie and Luna?

6. Sophie and PJ are at odds with each other during most of the road trip. How does their relationship evolve over the course of the book? 

7. How do Ollie and Luna help in PJ’s transformation from the beginning to the end? How do they help him confront his problems? 

8. Discuss the theme of second chances in the book. How do PJ's experiences reflect the possibility of redemption? 

9. Discuss the portrayal of aging and health in the book. How do PJ's heart attacks and his concerns about his health influence the narrative? 

10. What message does The Road to Tender Hearts convey about family? What was the biggest lesson you learned? 

Weblinks

»	Publisher's book info
»	Author Annie Hartnett's web site
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»	Interview with the Author

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