First published 2002
Dorothy Bliss sits alone in her Florida retirement community apartment, eighty-two years old and newly widowed after decades of marriage to Ted. She must learn to navigate grocery shopping, social hours, and the peculiar rhythms of senior living without her husband's steady presence. Dorothy tries to blend into the background of community life, but her attempts at invisibility backfire when a drug kingpin notices her unremarkable appearance. He decides Dorothy makes the perfect cover for his criminal enterprise and draws her into his operations as an unwitting front. Dorothy finds herself caught between the safe, predictable world of retirement community routines and the dangerous reality of drug trafficking. As she struggles to extricate herself from this unwanted entanglement, Dorothy discovers strengths she never knew she possessed. This final novel explores how an ordinary woman confronts both devastating loss and unexpected peril, revealing the resilience that emerges when life forces us to reinvent ourselves.
Genres: fiction, drama, crime, contemporary
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, reinvention
Setting: Florida, Retirement Community
Period: 20th-century
294 pages · Paperback · Dalkey Archive Press
Content warnings: drug-use