THE HEART HITCH

In Woodford’s novel, a recently fired philosophy professor and her farmhand neighbor form an unexpected bond during a cross-country road trip.

Ramona Sadler’s carefully curated life unravels after the loss of her professorship and her townhouse lands her in a mobile home at the Nearly Heaven RV Park in Jackalope, Texas— similar to the one she grew up in back in Snap Peas, New York. With her academic career in shambles due to apparent budget cuts and with her future uncertain, Ramona finds solace in volunteer work at a local hospital through the “Patient Pandas” program, despite her stickler supervisor’s annoying presence. After her relationship with her elitist boyfriend and fellow professor, Martin Smallwood, ends, she plans to spend the summer with her family in her Upstate New York hometown; her elderly mother is still recovering from a major surgery she had two years ago, and Ramona wants to be with her while she still can. When Ramona tells her favorite hospital patient, Butch, about her upcoming cross-country trip, he enlists his son to help her tow her RV 1,800 miles. That son is none other than Lonnie Acres, her frustratingly handsome and emotionally reserved supervisor, who also happens to live on a farm near her trailer. Although they’re reluctant travel partners at first, the two slowly open up to each other as the miles pass, revealing their dissatisfaction with their lives and other emotional wounds. Woodford’s novel explores Ramona’s guilt about living so far from her aging parents, and Lonnie’s grief over his mother’s recent death and his strained relationship with his father. The author expertly balances these heavier themes with humor, and a delightful cast of eccentric secondary characters pops in and out of the story. Ramona and Lonnie’s slow-burn relationship builds slowly but naturally, with just the right amount of romantic tension. It’s a straightforward road-trip romance, but also a thoughtful meditation on loss, growth, and the surprising ways that people can come into each other’s lives at just the right time.

A cozy, layered second-chance romance that invites laughter and reflection.