If ever I wanted to erase a day in my life, it’s this one.

Insult to injury, it’s supposed to be one of the best days. A party is in full swing in my Denver backyard as my husband Joe and I celebrate our imminent departure on a grand adventure, a year traveling around the country with our brand-new Airstream trailer.

Envy shines in our guests’ eyes even brighter than the twinkle lights strung around the yard, brighter than the bubbles rising in the Champagne flutes, brighter than the silvery flanks of the Airstream. Because who hasn’t, at the age of fifty, dreamed about chucking it all – the job, the house, the endless social obligations, the same-same-same of it all?

But we’re actually doing it, thanks to my having wangled a book contract to write about our year on the road.

As my agent says, escape is the ultimate fantasy. She’s sure this book will sell better than my first one, Do It Daily, on the benefits of having sex every single day for a year. (Spoiler alert: It’s awful. Joe and I could barely look at each other by the time the year was through. I’m sure that by the end – probably long before the end – he was fantasizing about other women each time he turned to me with gritted teeth, and you’d better believe I was thinking about other men. Idris Elba, anyone?)

But a year on the road, new places and no obligations, should spice things right up again, right? Right?

Such are my thoughts when I stumble into the bathroom – somebody brought tequila to the party and let me tell you what: Doing shots at fifty is waaaay different than shots at twenty – to splash a little water on my face, only to find the bathroom already in use.

By two people.

Let’s just say Joe didn’t wait to hit the road to spice things up.

When I get a gander at the goings-on in my downstairs powder room, I hit the road without him. Also without ever having driven the giant pickup he bought to pull the Airstream, and for sure never having towed anything in my life.

Thank God it’s late and there’s hardly any traffic. I head north, into Wyoming, the reverse of the trip we’d planned. My wedding band sails out the window near a town called Chugwater. My engagement ring nearly follows, but we’re talking a two-carat, emerald-cut, platinum-set ring and I come to my senses just in time.

After a few hours, I turn off the main road and end up in a remote campground in the Bighorn Mountains of northern Wyoming, the last place anyone would think to look for me. It’s the perfect place to hide out for a while, settle my nerves and figure out what to do next. I feel safe here. What could go wrong?

Best Laid Plans, Nora Best Mystery #1
Genre: Traditional
Release: February 2021
Purchase Link

Nora Best is the envy of her friends. She’s just turned fifty and has traded in her home with The Perfect-Ass Husband for an Airstream trailer and an adventure of a lifetime across the US.

But during their leaving party, Nora finds her husband in a compromising position with a friend. Storming out of the party she jumps into her truck with no idea how to tow the Airstream or where she’s going.

Nora ends up in a campground in the mountains of Wyoming, drowning her sorrows with its managers, Brad and Miranda. When she is woken by a frantic Miranda after Brad has disappeared and bloodstains have been found around the campsite, Nora finds herself caught up in an adventure she could never have expected . . . facing a charge of murder.

Meet the author:
Longtime journalist Gwen Florio turned to fiction in 2013 with her first novel, Montana, which won the Pinckley Prize for Debut Crime Fiction and the High Plains Book Award for Debut Novel. She has since released four other books in the Lola Wicks series (termed “gutsy” by the New York Times) and one standalone novel. She lives in Missoula, Montana. Visit her at gwenflorio.net, and on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.

All comments are welcomed.