Charleston

In this fiction debut, Thornton isn't successful in an account of a woman's return home and attempt to recapture a lost love. Set in 1990, Eliza Poinsett, a London art historian, starts the book off by musing about the chance occurrences that brought her old flame Henry Heyward back into her life after years apart, causing her to wonder what to do about her current boyfriend and to wonder whether Fate "had its arms wrapped so tightly around her that it would never let her go." Eliza meets Henry again at a wedding in England after 10 years apart, but the plot follows a predictable arc; Eliza returns home to Charleston, SC, where she finds that while "she had lost part of herself%E2%80%A6 now it was coming back to her." She and Henry, a newspaper publisher, reconnect, as she finds herself more and more drawn to the one who got away, despite the presence of another man. Readers putting a premium on subtlety and originality will be disappointed. (July)