After her husband’s death, the protagonist of Brenda Barker’s Next Chapter, Brenda decides to write the book her spouse, Maynard, always disparaged. She married him, a rodeo cowboy turned construction worker, because he offered stability. Now, he’s dead, their only child and his Japanese wife are moving to Japan, and Brenda finds herself at a crossroads. She takes a chance and signs up for the Sky Ridge Writer’s conference in California wine company and submits her novel about a chef named Clementine who communes with ancient goddesses from three different cultures.
Brenda Barker’s Next Chapter is a such fun read! Overall, it is gently humorous with some real laugh-out-loud moments. It’s a second-chance-at-life story stirred with a bit of romance and a bit of thriller. Tokunaga does a perfect job of not only capturing Brenda’s naivety about the world of publishing, the necessity for a social media following, etc, but also her general ingenuousness about the world and her personal convictions and strengths. As an author who published her first work at 66, I thoroughly enjoyed identified with Brenda.
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Brenda Barker’s Next Chapter (Blydyn Square Books, February 2, 2026) is available through:
Your local independent bookseller | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
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