THE ROAD TO EDEN’S RIDGE

Aspiring young songwriter heads for Nashville, in a meandering debut saddled with dialogue that often sounds like country-song lyrics.

The small Maine town she grew up in just isn’t big enough for Lindsey Briggs’s dreams, so she ditches her boring fiancé at the altar in favor of a one-way road trip to Tennessee. A chorus of ayuhs from the laconic locals speed her on her way—after all, Lindsey is the great-niece of Lily Frost, a music teacher who had a brief romance with country singer Ben McBride before he was a superstar. Once in Nashville, Lindsey sets about finding waitress work and composing twangy ditties, even singing one night at the famous Bluebird Café. Harvard-educated Lindsey hits it off almost instantly with her sassy roommate Gabby, even though the latter has only a high-school diploma. They form a band and call it Sugar Creek after Gabby’s Arkansas hometown, which Lindsey visits come Thanksgiving. She misses Maine but is determined to make it big like her idol Ben McBride. Turns out that McBride lives not too far away; he’s oh-so-rich but still drives a battered pickup and sports an ancient Stetson. Ben’s lawyer, a handsome young fellow named Michael James, is immediately smitten with Lindsey and even serenades her, though it’s clear from the way he sings that he should stick to lawyering. Lindsey, who’s heard that he’s about to be engaged to a glamorous female named Cynthia, keeps him at arm’s length until she and Gabby go on tour, heading north to Maine. Ben goes, too, and the story of his long-ago romance with Lily is told in flashback. He performs at a fund-raising concert with Lindsey, Michael shows up and begs her to marry him, she soaks his shirt with tears of joy . . . .

Like the heartbreak-and-honky-tonk tunes quoted throughout, an acquired taste.