Melodie Starkey

Eaton House: Book One Melodie Starkey

Alma Bryce has big ambitions for her gifted daughter, Megan: acceptance to an exclusive women's college; becoming a doctor or perhaps the next Marie Curie; Nobel Prize pending. What her plans don't include is Chris Eaton. Shy, plain Megan complies with her mother's plans simply for lack of reason to stand up to her. However, the first time she encounters Chris (in a high school history class), she decides she is going to marry him. This dream gets an abrupt shove from reality when she discovers she's pregnant after their first intimacy. Alma erupts, disowning her as a "lying Jezebel." Fortunately, Chris's often absent widower father surrenders his estate house to them to raise their family. Set against the backdrop of the 1960's and 70's, Megan throws herself into raising her quickly expanding family and writing novels when she can squeeze in a moment of quiet time, while Chris dives into his college studies and career. They open their home up to embrace the worst case foster children that Chris encounters in his job as a child psychologist at a boy's home, mending them with abundant love and patience. Dealing with illness and loss as well as occasional triumphs, their marriage remains rock solid. So what makes a person whom life has given everything she wished for begin to feel this isn't what she really wanted after all? And, once she strays, can she find her way back to the world she realizes too late really was her happily ever after? Eaton House is the first book in a series chronicling the Eaton family saga from Chris and Megan's first encounter through the next two generations.