Lisa Wingate’s latest novel is a timely escape to a quieter existence in small-town Texas.
The town of Moses Lake, Texas, is strictly fictional, but Lisa found the inspiration for the locale at the center of her new novel, Blue Moon Bay (Bethany House), while transitioning from one home to another. The sheer beauty of her surroundings—not to mention the legends about what exactly was hidden beneath the water nearby—is what made it so fascinating.
Well, that, and some pretty stellar people watching. “It was home to a wide range of residents,” Lisa says, “ranging from low-income families in the hills, to tourists visiting upscale waterside resorts, to wealthy vacationers enjoying posh lake homes.”
In stark contrast to our busy, technology-driven society, it was a world with surprisingly different priorities. “In an era when so many of us live lives that are stressful, overscheduled and disconnected, life on the water seems tempting, comforting, alluring, but also somehow mysterious,” Lisa shares. “There’s never any telling what might be hiding beneath the surface. It’s a perfect place for God to bring together a group of estranged family members with a mystery to solve.”
The story’s leading lady, Heather Hampton, has plenty of unanswered questions about her father’s death during her senior year of high school. Now the sale of the family land brings her face-to-face with her family and her past.
“In so many ways, the secrets of Heather’s childhood, the trauma of her father’s death, and her dysfunctional connection with her mother have limited her ability to form a happy, healthy, fully-rounded adult life,” Lisa shares. “So many people struggle to move beyond family patterns, painful secrets and childhood resentments. I think one of the most valuable take-away lessons of Blue Moon Bay lies in Heather’s revelation that God made her family members who they are. And she begins to realize that by waiting for her mother and her brother to suddenly fit her pre-defined parameters of what they should be, she has been first and foremost hurting herself—her choice is to either love them the way they are, or not love them at all.”