I figured out the ‘secret” of Kate Racculia’s This Must Be The Place in the first 20 pages.  I knew how it would end and who would be together, but I still kept reading.

It’s not the story in this soap opera drama with unwed mothers and quirky boarding house roomers – it’s the characters – and maybe Racculia’s astute views of life and death that drove me to the last pages – confirming what I already suspected.  And, yes, they all do live happily ever after.

Arthur Rook finds himself a young widower when his thirty-two year old wife accidentally gets fried by a loose electrical wire on a movie set.  After discovering an old shoe box full of memorabilia and a mysterious unmailed postcard, Arthur runs away to a boarding house in Ruby Falls, New York, to find out who his wife really was.  Along the journey, he meets Mona, Amy’s long-lost friend; Oneida, her daughter; and assorted players in various stages of growing up – both physically and mentally.

Persevering to the end of the drama rewarded me with that feeling of closure in a comfortable story, but also offered a glimpse at “worthy souls” – some worth knowing and some reflecting each of us as we struggle to know ourselves.

This Must Be The Place – easy to read; easy to put down –  charming distraction.