Synopsis
The International Best-seller. Sara is 28 and has never been outside Sweden - except in the (many) books she reads. When her elderly penfriend Amy invites her to come and visit her in Broken Wheel, Iowa, Sara decides it's time. But when she arrives, there's a twist waiting for her - Amy has died. Finding herself utterly alone in a dead woman's house in the middle of nowhere was not the holiday Sara had in mind. But Sara discovers she is not exactly alone. For here in this town so broken it's almost beyond repair are all the people she's come to know through Amy's letters: poor George, fierce Grace, buttoned-up Caroline and Amy's guarded nephew Tom. Sara quickly realises that Broken Wheel is in desperate need of some adventure, a dose of self-help and perhaps a little romance, too. In short, this is a town in need of a bookshop.
Review
An Amazon Best Book of January 2016: Much like champagne punch, Bivald’s book-club-perfect tale of the tiny and slowly dying town of Broken Wheel, Iowa, is frothy and fun even as it sneaks up on you to deliver an emotional wallop. When Sara, a young Swedish woman who is at loose ends after losing her bookseller job, comes to visit her pen pal Amy in Broken Wheel, her first shock is that Amy has just died from a chronic ailment. The second surprise is that the citizens of Broken Wheel expect Sara to stay in Amy’s house anyway. When Sara uncovers Amy’s delightful stash of books, Sara decides to open a bookstore in the one-block-long downtown, inadvertently sparking a renaissance in Broken Wheel as the residents come together to help the store become a success. Garnished with plenty of book and character references from popular books such as Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and Bridget Jones’s Diary, this charming fish-out-of-water story will remind you why you’re a booklover. —Adrian Liang
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.