Welcome to The Emerald Heart Hotel - The sign on the big gate is faded, and the gate is usually locked because the hotel closed two years ago when Mignon King lost her husband. His death, on top of the loss of their daughter many years before, has Mignon mired in grief. But it's more than grief that has her trapped. Before she can move on, she must decide what to do with the hotel she and her husband owned and managed for more than two decades. She lives there alone with her dog, Galahad, though even Mignon would hardly call it living. She wants to be happy again, to find a new way forward, but she's stuck. Her longtime friend, Dominick, a real estate agent, wants her to sell the hotel property. Old hotel aside, the acreage alone in the town of Emerald Isle and fronting on Bogue Sound, is valuable and will bring many offers, but that's also part of the problem. Mignon loves the Emerald Heart property and feels responsible for it and wants to protect her husband's memory. What might new owners do with the property? What might they destroy?On a strange day in early September, a man shows up unexpectedly on her dock. He's charming. And he's interested in the Emerald Heart...