bonniegrove.com

At The stuckville cafe

Sun FlowerBased on the beloved short story The Stuckville Cafe, this full length novel will take you back to the heart of the Stuckville, reuniting you with your favorite characters and introducing some new friends.

Bonnie is currently at work on this novel! Enjoy an excerpt of chapter 1, and keep watching the shelves of your favorite bookstore.

Chapter 1

The town has a real name, but I call it Stuckville. Because, boy, oh, boy, I'm stuck here. Stuck in this town of a whopping 2,300 people. Of course, there’s a sub-division is going up right this minute, so that'll add forty new families. New customers.        

I own a cafe in town. I sell ice cream, espresso drinks and Mexican food. I know the combination sounds cock-eyed, but most everything about this town is cock-eyed. Just take a look at the building my shop is in, for instance. A giant two story slab of concrete rising up from its rickety foundation. The place was built in 1907, and the windows in my cafe are original. When you look through them everything outside is wavy and has a bluish tinge. Like looking through the bottom of a coke bottle.

The owner of the building painted the outside of it last summer, but I guess he used the wrong kind of paint, or something, because it’s peeling off the walls in great strips and littering the street like a ticker tape parade everyone forgot to attended.

 My cafe is on the main floor of the building which has a hallway running down the center, neatly dividing the building into two sections. Each store has an interior door that opens into the hall way. Which is handy when you want to pop into the flower shop, newspaper offices, or chat with the realtor, all of whom share the main floor with my café. We also boast two washrooms and, beyond them, at the very back of the building, a thrift store that opens Thursday and Friday afternoons only.

Debi works part time at the flower shop. When she's working, we leave our interior doors open so we can pop across the hall for a 'hey there'.

Upstairs, you'll find four of the dingiest apartments you're likely to encounter anywhere. Most of the tenants come and go so fast I barely get a glimpse of them. But one, Joe, has been living up there since creation. He rides a bicycle, drinks heavily (sometimes simultaneously), and seldom bathes. My eyes water when he visits my shop -from the smell, not from empathy - but I always give him a coffee and let him have a sit down. I don't treat Joe any differently than I treat anyone else in town. I've learned a few things since life plopped me down in Stuckville. I've learned that everyone has problems. Some are just the kind that show on the outside.

 Take me. My outside looks fine. I scoop ice cream, heat up burritos, and foam milk for lattes with a smile on my face. I chat up the customers, mop the floor, and visit the post office.  But, just like Joe, something in my life stinks. You just can’t see it.