Happy Valentine's Day! We get sappy with 'Evvie Drake Starts Over'

NPR's Book of the Day

NPR

Arts, Books

4.2 • 670 Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2022

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In honor of Valentine's Day, we are revisiting a conversation with our very own romance expert, Linda Holmes. Her novel Evvie Drake Starts Over is about a woman who is getting ready to leave her husband when she gets a surprising call – he is dead. She finds herself alone until former major league pitcher Dean Tenney, who can't throw a baseball anymore, hides from the media stress in her guest bedroom. Hijinks ensue. Linda Holmes told NPR's Scott Simon that they both had to figure out a new path in life unexpectedly; something most of us can relate to.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. It's Valentine's Day. And yeah,
0:07.7	it's kind of easy to be kind of a Darya about this holiday, right? Like, I'm guilty of this,
0:13.3	too. It is a cynical ploy to tug at our innermost sentimental parts for the capitalistic gain of the
0:19.2	romance industrial complex. But so what? I mean,
0:23.9	at the end of the day, romance rocks, and more to the point of this podcast, so do romance books.
0:29.9	Today, we're going to bring you a conversation between NPR Scott Simon and NPR's Linda Holmes,
0:35.0	host of the podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour.
0:42.8	Linda wrote a book back in 2019 called Evie Drake Starts Over, and it's about an unlikely couple.
0:43.8	And they get together because of an abrupt change of plans that wasn't really voluntary,
0:49.0	something I think a lot of us can relate to.
0:52.2	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
0:57.0	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.
1:01.5	On our new show, Sources and Methods.
1:03.5	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people
1:06.8	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
1:10.9	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:17.1	Evie Drake is about to make a dramatic change in her life.
1:20.4	She's planning to leave her husband.
1:22.4	When she gets a phone call that changes her life for her, he's dead.
1:27.2	She's a widow who doesn't feel much grief.
1:29.8	Evie winds up living alone in a big house in her small main town until she gets a border.
1:34.8	It's Dean Tenney, former Major League pitcher who can no longer throw the ball over the plate.
	...

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