on the cover / By Heidi Walters

A Small-Town Affair

But there’s an undeniable familiarity. Carnelian Cove is “every place and no place,” McLaughlin said. It’s part Eureka, Ferndale, Trinidad, Shelter Cove, Crescent City and Fort Bragg, and part some other unrelated places. It’s set among redwoods, rhododendrons, rocky cliffs, rivers and the ocean, and it has lots of neat old houses. Its bay is crescent shaped. It has a marina in its old town district and no boardwalk.

It is, as we learn in Book One of the series, A Small-Town Temptation, an “interesting town … packed with the kind of character that came with several interests nurtured in relative isolation. Fishermen and artists, lumberjacks and university professors, dairy farmers and silversmiths — all rubbing up against each other in an eclectic collection of shops and neighborhoods that appeared to predate the concept of zoning restrictions.”

Carnelian Cove also has a depressed economy, laid-off mill workers, a spendy private club in a landmark mansion (sorta like the Ingomar Club, only it’s named “the Avalon”), a big conglomerate threatening to move in and potentially crush local family-owned business, a wealthy local family whose actions foster a volatile mix of praise and distrust, a tribal casino, anti-growthers, environmental activists, corporate outsiders and local businesses setting premium prices because they can (or must?). And, in Book One, the heroine runs her late father’s sand and gravel operation — shades of McLaughlin’s own life (her husband’s family’s business is Eureka Ready Mix).

In many ways, life in Carnelian Cove actually sounds a lot like life as it is in some of our small Humboldt towns. But it’s not quite. Because in Carnelian Cove, we know exactly how things are going to turn out for our hero and heroine in the end. Well. Very well. It’s a romance, remember?

The question is, how do they get there? And can we real-life Humboldtians glean a few tips from them along the way? Just maybe? Because we’re so alike?

Let’s see.

Say you’re Tess, a young, locally raised female architect recently returned from the big city, hot to trot on a new project on the waterfront. How do you get a good contractor?

Well, in Carnelian Cove, your rich, imperious, not-to-be-defied grandmother — the town matriarch from a long line of patriarchs and mayors and with a favors-list a mile long — finds him for you. And you hate him. But things work out anyway. Because Quinn’s hot. Very hot. And sweet. And a reformed rogue.

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