The Golden Hour
A Powerful, Heartwarming Summer Love Story
(Standalone Novel)
After the loss of her single father, Josie Wills is forced to give up her dreams and return home to take care of her autistic teenage brother Nick. But she doesn’t just leave her dreams behind; she has to leave her first real love Julian Russell.
Having been the mother figure for Nick his entire life, stepping into the role of parent comes easily for Josie. She adores Nick, and taking care of him makes her feel closer to her mother who never had the chance to see them grow up. For the last three years, Josie has gladly carried the torch and picked up where her mother left off. Although supporting Nick in their small mountain town on a waitress’s salary isn’t as easy.
Willing to put all her faith in her brother’s incredible skills, Josie sells everything they have, to enroll him in a mathematics competition. The two make the journey from their Tennessee town to the upscale world of Rosemary Beach. The stunning, serene coastal town along the Gulf Coast is full of cafés, bicycles, and cobbled streets. What she doesn’t expect is to find Julian there.
But Julian isn’t the only surprise that summer. Josie will soon find out exactly how far love can stretch when she uncovers a mystery that will change her life and the lives of those around her forever.
An uplifting summer escape that will strengthen your family bonds and have you believing in the incredible power of love. If you enjoyed the TV movies based on Jenny’s books and are looking for more feel-good, small-town romance, look no further!
Excerpt
The Golden Hour
Chapter One
Lox Creek, Tennessee
Growing up, Josie Wills thought she’d had so many choices available to her. But when it came down to it, she’d really only had one.
She didn’t want to think about the options she’d let go. What was the point? Surrendering to the uniformity of everyday living was much easier. The security of consistency outweighed the thrill of surprises. Or at least that was what she told herself.
She turned off the bathroom light and felt her way down the hall. When she arrived at the kitchen she blinked to adjust to thebrightness, where—to her surprise—her teenage brother, Nick, was already awake before the sun. His head was down as he worked on a math problem in his spiral notebook over his breakfast of eggs and toast.
“I have to go in early today,” she said. “You going to be okay?”
“Yeah.”
When his attention didn’t leave his notebook, she knew better than to take his response personally.
“All right, love you.”
“Okay,” he replied, evidently too fixated on his page to think about being cordial.
At eighteen, his face was starting to appear less youthful and more chiseled, his mature legs stretching out and filling the space under the small kitchen table. Josie tried not to focus on how old he was getting. She treasured her younger brother, and she wanted to hold on to this time together forever.
While they were bound by family and shared the same green eyes their father had, the siblings couldn’t be more different. Nick’s hair was a much lighter brown than hers, and he’d gotten lankier limbs like the rest of the family, while she was petite and solid. Nick had exceptional skills in math, but she’d been more interested in literature and history. Yet, despite their differences, they got along incredibly well.
She grabbed her purse and rushed out the door, climbed into her car, and sat for a moment in the silence.
Nick had been having trouble in school again. Because of that, he’d become withdrawn. None of the teachers or his counselor seemed to know the best way to reach him, and he didn’t have many friends to offer support. Graduation was in a few weeks. He’d asked if he could skip the ceremony, which had broken her heart. The event would probably be a sensory overload for him, but she was willing to bet his reluctance to go was due more to the fact that he was tired of dealing with no one understanding his unique gifts.
Talking to him about how he felt was difficult, and she feared he’d have little opportunity to shine in their town. She needed to get him out, show him what life could be like, but she didn’t have the means or the free hours. She had to work just to pay the bills and put aside inadequate savings.
Her hands on the steering wheel, she stared out at the late spring darkness. She wanted to do better for her and her brother. She just wasn’t sure how.
Josie started the car and headed to the diner, her mind full.
Whenever she faced hard times, which was a lot these days, recollections of her youth came back to her, as if her mind were stacking up all the experiences that had led to where she was now. It didn’t help. Remembering only made her more exhausted.
One memory floated to the surface without warning. She tried to push it away as she drove, but the thought was relentless. Five years old and barefoot—the way she had spent every summer as a child—she’d taken the shortcut from her friend Ruth’s through the thicket to get back to the house nestled in the mountains where Josie lived with her parents.
“Head home when the lightning bugs come out,” her mother had always told her.
With only her father at home that night, Josie had gotten an early start so she wouldn’t worry him. Mama was at the hospital for some tests for her blood pressure and to check on her headaches, and she would soon bring home Josie’s new baby brother.
For weeks, up until the day Mama had gone to the hospital, she’d practiced taking care of babies with Josie. They’d worked on pinning cloth diapers correctly using Josie’s dolls, and Mama had shown her just how to hold the baby’s head to support its neck. Josie couldn’t wait to have a younger brother to look after. Mama had told her she’d make a wonderful mother one day, which was good because that was exactly what Josie had wanted to be.
On her way home that evening the sun was barely visible, its pink-and-orange light outlining the valleys before it disappeared behind the mountains—the time of day Mama called “the golden hour.” Josie had stopped at a nearby creek to sink her feet in the cool stream, then bent down to pick up a rock with a silver stripe that had caught her eye. Deciding to take it home to draw it, she’d washed off the rock then dried it on her tattered sundress. The cicadas had started croaking, so she’d quickly dropped the rock in her pocket and hopped onto the bank. Careful of loose gravel, she’d continued down the path toward home, thinking about what she could try to make for herself and Daddy for dinner. Being only five, Josie wasn’t allowed to use the stove, and she’d wondered how she would fry thetomatoes she was planning to cook.
She’d made it past the thicket, across the meadow, and all the way to the edge of the yard before Mama’s golden hour had ended. Proud of herself for getting home so quickly, she’d bounded through the grass as fast as her bare feet could take her and stopped when she reached her father sitting hunched on the steps leading to thedoor.
“Hi, Daddy,” she’d said.
But something wasn’t the same about Daddy. When he lifted his head from his hands, his eyes were swollen and red, and Josie wondered if he was having an allergic reaction like she had once when she’d eaten peanuts. He reached out for her and drew her into a tight embrace, and she decided she could comfort him the way Mama had comforted her when she’d had the allergy.
That hour had been anything but golden. It had been the first step toward the life Josie was now living as an adult. She’d had no idea back then how much everything would change. At a very young age, she’d had to learn about conditions like eclampsia and cerebral hemorrhage. She’d also had to understand how to live without her mother.
Now, one hand on the wheel, the other in her pocket as she drove, she ran her fingers over the jagged hinges of her father’s old compass, which she carried with her everywhere. The brass cover had been lost, leaving the two broken hinges on the edge. He’d told her he wasn’t given permission by his parents to follow his dreams, so he wanted the compass to be a reminder for her to follow her heart and to let it lead her to her brightest future.
But she didn’t believe anything could lead her there anymore. She doubted the magnetic needle would point anywhere but the place she was now. However, the compass was the only token she had of her dad’s, besides the old mountain house he’d left behind, so she carried the circular object around to feel closer to him. She let it fall to the bottom of her wide shirt pocket and made the final turn to work.
Every day Josie made the same six-minute drive through theTennessee mountains from her house in Lox Creek to the diner on the edge of town. When she arrived for the breakfast shift, she parked next to the trash bins around back.
Josie went in through the single door to the kitchen and said hello to the cooks before she put her lunch bag in the refrigerator next to thecollection of salad dressing jars, then headed to the break room. She liked going in there early to skirt around having to chat with the other waitresses when they came in. She used to know most of them in school, and a few years ago she probably would have fallen right into their chatter, but now it seemed unnecessary. She stole a few extra minutes for herself and tied up her long brown hair using the cloudy mirror on the wall. Then she put on her apron—a thin, denim smock with her name in simple black type pinned above her left breast.
The rest of the day was spent taking orders, putting on her most pleasant smile, and pretending everything was easy and fine, which it certainly wasn’t. But she didn’t allow her troubles to permeate her work.
When she was only twenty, she’d been tasked with this life; Nick depended on her—and would for a few more years at least—so she’d done everything she could to make the best of the situation. Forced optimism was what got her through. She told herself she was lucky in a lot of ways: she was healthy, she had a job that generally paid the bills, and she had her tiny family of two—just her and Nick. They had each other.
“Hey there,” fellow waitress Ruth Swanson said in her usual detached tone as she came into the break room like a whirlwind. Her body language and disheveled appearance gave away the fact that she’d probably overslept. Again.
Josie finished tying her apron behind her back. “Morning.”
Ruth gave her a side-eyed glance while putting her own apron on in a flash. It was a far cry from their giggles on the teeter-totter at school when they were girls. Ruth had been one of Josie’s friends growing up, but now they barely spoke. Ever since Josie had returned home after quitting college, Ruth had been distant, and Josie wasn’t sure why. She guessed maybe Ruth thought Josie had gone off in search of something better, and left her behind. But she’d just been trying to do the best she could for herself and follow her dad’s advice to go wherever her inner compass led her. She’d never imagined this job would be the height of her career.
Josie went over to her morning station and set in rolling silverware in paper napkins and dropping the bundled cutlery into the large bin thewaitresses used to set the tables quickly between groups.
“It goes knife, fork, then spoon,” Helen had told Josie on her first day there. “The knife should be on the bottom because it’s thelongest.” Helen’s instructions had faded away as the days went by and Josie plunged into her thoughts, something she did a lot.
Ruth passed her and headed into the dining area. She didn’t know what Josie was dealing with these days because Josie hadn’t had time to tell her—or anyone for that matter. Sure, there were whispers around town about “that poor girl and her brother who’d lost everything,” but none of them really knew entirely what she’d lost. She didn’t let herself indulge in the memory of it too often because the what-if was more than she could bear.
Jenny Hale is a USA Today and international bestselling author of romantic contemporary fiction. Her books have sold over a million copies worldwide, have been translated into multiple languages, and adapted for television. Her novels Coming Home for Christmas and Movie Guide Epiphany Award winner Christmas Wishes and Mistletoe Kisses are Hallmark Channel original movies. She was included in Oprah Magazine’s “19 Dreamy Summer Romances to Whisk You Away” and both Southern Living’s “30 Christmas Novels to Start Reading Now” as well as “Beach Reads Perfect for Summer” in 2020 as well as 2023. Her stories are chock-full of feel-good romance and overflowing with warm settings, great friends, and family. Jenny is at work on her next novel, delighted to be bringing even more heartwarming stories to her readers. When she isn’t writing or heading up her romantic fiction imprint Harpeth Road, she can be found running around her hometown of Nashville with her husband, two boys, and their labradoodle, taking pictures—her favorite pastime.
A Note:
Jenny is available for speaking engagements, interviews, and appearances. She also loves speaking with book clubs and writer groups via video chat or in person (distance and schedule permitting).
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The Golden HourWritten By Jenny Hale
Review By Heidi Lynn’s Book Reviews
First, I want to thank Jenny Hale and Harpeth Road Press for providing me with this book so I may bring you this review.
The Golden Hour is a very beautiful written book by Jenny Hale that will have you smiling! With each book Jenny writes you can just tell she puts her whole heart and soul into writing her books. Out of all the books she has written, this one is one of my favorites.
Kristen Ingebretson is an incredibly talented cover designer that created Jenny’s beautiful cover. This cover is truly breathtaking!
The Golden Hour concentrates on family and finding yourself after tragedies.
Jenny with the help of Amy Nielsen created an amazing character with autism by the name of Nick. Nick pulled on all of my heartstrings seeing him mature throughout the storyline.
Math was always my worst subject in school and to this day still is. Nick totally impressed me with his passion for numbers and how brilliant in solving mathematical equations he was.
I loved some of the unique names that Jenny created. I kept thinking of Zelda the Nintendo game from back in the day. Plus, Rainy was a very unique character.
There were definitely some wicked twists and turns I never saw coming. However, after the secrets were revealed it was all made since.
