Dear Reader,

Today’s guest author, Reyna Marder Gentin lives with her family in Westchester County, New York. She’s a former criminal defense attorney who now spends her time writing, volunteering in a domestic violence clinic, and cooking for family and friends. She is the proud steward of a Little Free Library and loves sharing books with her neighbors. You can learn more about Reyna and her books at reynamardergentin.com and by following her on Instagram @reynamardergentin.

Reyna’s new novel is ‘Jessica Harmon Has Stepped Away.’ When thirty-year-old Jessica Harmon joins her publicly adored but privately impossible mother on a six-week literary tour, she hopes to mend their relationship. But a crisis brings to light long-hidden secrets that force Jessica to question everything she thought she knew—about her mother, and herself.

You could win one of three copies of ‘Jessica Harmon Has Stepped Away.’ Send an email to reyna@reynamardergentin.com and you’ll be entered in the drawing. U.S. residents only, please.

Please drop Reyna a note and welcome her to the book club.

My coffee maker has given me a new lease on life.

Okay. That’s an overstatement. But it’s changed the way I feel about waking up.

I’m in charge of the morning caffeine fix. Although my husband can identify the coffee maker, he’s never gotten the hang of brewing the coffee. For a while, I contemplated enforcing a more equitable division of labor on the coffee front, but then I remembered the many things that my beloved takes care of for me. So, when I arise, I make a carafe of 14 cups, which we work through between breakfast and lunch. Sometimes we do decaf.

My responsibilities expanded during the pandemic when we both worked from home. I would be at my desk writing, and my husband would be secluded in his tiny office taking Zoom calls from early morning to late at night. Several weeks into this house arrest, he started to send me the occasional text. “Coffee?” Truth be told, he’d text a single word from our secret marital lexicon (the language you develop when you’ve been married so long that one made-up word substitutes for a paragraph of legitimate English) that translated to: “is the coffee still warm, are you willing to bring me a cup, please knock very quietly and stay out of range of the camera when you hand it to me.”

Covid eventually passed, as did my coffee delivery service, but I still made the morning coffee. So how did this appliance change my life?

I was aware that my coffee maker had a digital clock that could be set to display the current time. Like the VCR of old, the clock on my coffee maker was an irrelevant blinking light, always flashing 12:00 a.m. Who needs to check the time on your coffee maker? Don’t you have a watch? a cell phone? a microwave?

Then the proverbial light bulb went off. I realized that the clock connected to the programmable feature on the coffee machine. The next morning, the pot of coffee was magically ready at 6:45 a.m. A revelation! A miracle!

How much time does it save to set a timer at night versus making the coffee in the morning? Ten minutes tops–but it isn’t about that. It’s the fantasy I entertain that someone else has gotten out of bed early and made coffee for me while I was still lounging around, hitting the snooze button. In my imagination, I give my husband credit for making the coffee. And that’s changed everything.

— Reyna Marder Gentin

Be sure to enter the drawing to win one of three copies of ‘Jessica Harmon Has Stepped Away.’ Send an email to reyna@reynamardergentin.com

Thanks for reading with me. It’s so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com