The Australian Pen Pal by Michelle Linn-Gust

College English professor Rachel Monroe realizes life is about connections. Before her husband Tom’s death from cancer, he made her promise she would pursue all the goals and dreams she had left behind in her life. Knowing even in death Tom is leading her, Rachel completes her first fiction manuscript, one of the goals she had never accomplished, and finds a second career as a writer. When a publicity tour takes her from her Kansas home to several cities in Australia, she has the opportunity to find her Australian pen pal, Jenny Phillips, who had quit writing near the end of their senior year of high school. Rachel visits Coolum Beach, the oceanside town where Jenny lived most of the years the two girls corresponded. Rachel can sense a change, that Tom isn’t guiding her as he once was. She struggles with a new manuscript and reconciling her hope that somehow she’ll find Jenny. In the process, she meets Jamie Stephens, on vacation himself, and as Jamie’s life becomes intertwined wit