Submitted by Susanne Bacon
Take your niche and make it your asset! This is exactly what Dottie Dolan does, as she faces the challenge to create a new life for herself. Still new to the quaint Victorian town of Wycliff on South Puget Sound, she opens up a German deli on Main Street.
“Delicate Dreams” by Lakewood author Susanne Bacon was published only recently. “If you love Western Washington and German food, this small-town romance might be just up your alley,” promises Bacon, who is at home with both. “Of course, you will encounter a lot of familiar places around South Puget Sound.”
Amongst those is Hess Bakery & Deli in Lakewood. Susanne Bacon actually worked there for a few months. “It was a wonderful experience,” Bacon says. “To me it was a dream come true, and this store is so much more than German products to customers and employees alike. It is about people’s memories and identity.”
Apart from the culinary road Susanne Bacon’s novel is taking – food lovers might appreciate the recipes in the appendix – it also takes on a more serious note. “Every big move in life has a motive behind it,” Bacon is convinced. “I was trying to put myself into these shoes: What can make a middle-aged woman decide to open up a business? There must have been a life-changer.”
For protagonist Dottie Dolan it is the recent loss of her husband. And as her deli business is slowly thriving, she finds herself in the emotional conflict between grieving for her late husband and falling in love again. Then the fund for the town’s annual Victorian Christmas gets embezzled. The entire event is about to be canceled, leaving smaller stores in Wycliff, such as the deli, struggling. Will Dottie stay on top of her difficult situation?
“I have been playing with different ways of narration,” Susanne Bacon explains. “Dottie Dolan’s letters to her deceased husband are just one perspective of the novel. Another are the vignettes of the people Dottie is meeting while she starts establishing her deli.” All of these characters are fictitious, by the way, as is the town of Wycliff that was only loosely modeled on the geographical site of Port Townsend, yet in an utterly vague location ‘somewhere between Olympia and Seattle’. “But that is the only meddling I did with the map,” Susanne Bacon states with a wink.
Where to get this potential stocking stuffer? “Delicate Dreams” is available as an AuthorHouse soft cover edition (270 pages), online via AuthorHouse book store, Amazon, Barnes and Noble as well as at any local bookstore (ISBN 978-1-5049-4964-4, $ 19.95). There is also an E-book version (ISBN978-1-5049-5004-6, $ 3.99).
Author Photo: Laci Anna Duer
