As her stultifying marriage is unravelling, and in the midst of mourning the loss of her creative self, Caro Tanner has a nightmare about Peter, an old love whom she hasn’t seen in twenty years. She takes this as a sign he still needs her. With her three children safely off to summer camp, Caro embarks on a pre-Facebook, pre-cell phone road trip to recapture who she once was and what she thinks she once had.

Set in the rock ‘n roll ‘60s of Tucson, Arizona—when Caro and Peter were kooky, colorful, and inseparable drama students—and in the suburban ‘80s, when Caro’s creative spark has been quenched to serve the needs of her husband and children, So Happy Together explores the conundrum of love and physical attraction, creativity and family responsibilities, and what happens when they are out of sync. It is a story of missed opportunities, the alluring possibility of second chances, and what we leave behind, carry forward, and settle for when we choose. It sits in that complicated, confounding, beautiful place where love resides.

Deborah K. Shepherd was born in Cambridge, MA and spent much of her early life in the New York area. Before retiring in 2014, she was a social worker with a primary focus on the prevention of domestic violence and sexual assault, and provision of victim services. During an earlier career as a reporter, she wrote for Show Business in New York City and for the Roe Jan Independent, a weekly newspaper in Columbia County, New York. She also freelanced as a travel writer. She graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, Michigan, and holds a BFA in drama from the University of Arizona and an MSW from the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service. Deborah lives with her husband and two rescue dogs on the coast of Maine, where she gardens, cooks, swims, reads, entertains her grandsons, tries to speak French, and blogs at www.deborahshepherdwrites.com and www.paleogram.com. She is currently at work on a memoir. She lives in Belfast, ME.