Excerpt from The Big Door Prize by M.O. Walsh, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

And so he did this for her. And so she did that for him.

This was their marriage.

What Douglas did not know, however, was that tonight, as he sat at the dinner table polishing his new horn, his clean-shaven upper lip looked so foreign to Cherilyn that she fancied it to be made of wax. The lingering splotches of razor burn, along with the rigors of his first trombone lesson, had crested his top lip like an infection and made Cherilyn imagine her husband, for the first time in her life, a stranger. But these were not her only imaginings.

As is often the case when one person is honest, other hearts wish to be honest as well. So, ever since Douglas confessed, Cherilyn had begun some introspection of her own. What kind of life was she living? she wondered. What sort of dreams had she put on hold as she piddled about at different jobs, as she ran her errands, as they small-talked their way through the Sunday crossword? And were the undone things in one's life even dreams, when you thought about it? Could something even be a destiny if you don't know it exists until your life is half over? What was her true calling? Making birdhouses out of Popsicle sticks? Crocheting Christmas stockings? What great places had she stamped on her passport? An entire life in Deerfield? Is that what she was meant for? Why not something bigger? Something grand? Wasn't she about to turn forty as well?

Excerpted from The Big Door Prize by M. O. Walsh. Copyright © 2020 by M. O. Walsh. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.