Beleaguered orderly at a retirement home for elderly authors and publishing professionals, Cecibel Bringer is beside herself when her favorite author, and formerly notorious lothario, Alphonse Carducci moves into the home to spend his final days among his peers. While he's not as strong as he was in his younger days, his witty mind is voraciously inspired for the first time in years... Seeing Cecibel, a private woman whose face shows the terrible accident she was in years before, Alphonse is determined to learn more about his new muse and what she's hiding.

What no one expects is for a ragtag group of elderly authors and editors to come together and work on what will become the last new project to keep them motivated through the winters of their lives. Alphonse creates Aldo and Cecelia, two star-crossed lovers who carry secrets that the other may never fully understand. Cecibel finds her own inspiration from the story she herself has inspired, and it will change her, and what is left of Alphonse's, life.

THE BAR HARBOR RETIREMENT HOME FOR FAMOUS WRITERS (AND THEIR MUSES) by Terri-Lynne DeFino is a fascinating tale of authors, their muses, and their fans. Cecibel, something of an unreliable narrator (or at least one keeping secrets from readers), is an engaging and empathetic main character. Her face, marred by an accident that she may or may not have caused years before, serves as a wall that keeps a thick barrier between her and the residents at the Bar Harbor retirement home. It's not until her favorite author comes to live at the home that those walls come crashing down, and Cecibel begins to learn what she is capable of, and the life she has purposely kept away from. The story that Alphonse and his cohorts are writing, set in the 1950s, is a heartbreaking but sincere story of love and what lengths people will go to do what they believe is the right thing, and is an interesting juxtaposition to the 1999-set reality. At times both stories are a little too long, but they wrap up in a satisfying ending that brings everything to a justified and capable conclusion. The rest of the ensemble cast of authors, editors, and agents are a joy to read about.