Pause: Women's Fiction by Sara Stamey

Dear Diary,

Shall we pause to take stock?

Female (liberated, at least from fraught marriage). Age 52, height 5'5", weight 120, bone density excellent, minimal cellulite, maximal hot flashes. One and 3/4 breasts.

Months since sex: 27

Lindsey Friedland, former river-rafting guide and avid outdoorswoman, has hit the worst stretch of water she's ever faced: divorce from an abuser, breast cancer, menopause symptoms that her friends seem to have paddled serenely by. And she's lost sight of her dream of becoming an environmental journalist.

Lindsey needs to get her spark back.

Dear Diary, Disastrous blind dates so far: The walking cologne bottle. The "really want a gal to give me babies" guy. The pushy past-life reintegration facilitator.

Will Lindsey make it past the rocky shoals of family upheavals, job crises, sexism, and ageism... not to mention toxic love traps? Does "happily ever after" now mean settling for occasional (but hot!) sex with Mr. Maybe? Can she reclaim her journalism dream?

Dear Diary, I'm tired of being tragic. I'm sending off my article about the bulldozers versus the baby owls.

***

First Place, Somerset Award for Women's Fiction

"Sara Stamey does for fiction what Cheryl Strayed and Elizabeth Gilbert did for memoir-Pause gives a voice to women who are too often invisible in contemporary books. The unforgettable Lindsey Friedland weaves together humor and passion against the backdrop of the Pacific Northwest's natural beauty, using her unique voice to deliver a must-read novel about friendship, love, and killer hot flashes."

- USA Today Bestselling author Mindy Klasky