The Lonestar Cafe is a sweet contemporary novel about a driven young woman who has problems at work, problems with her family, and problems with her love life. When a detour sends her to the Crossroads Cafe, her life takes a detour as well.

Laura Draper works for a big publishing company that recently acquired a small regional magazine based in Austin, Texas that they plan to glossy up. They rename it Texcetera, and send Laura to oversee the remake and launch.

Laura works non-stop for weeks and the remake is going smoothly…until the last minute. Just as the magazine is to be sent to the printers, everything goes wrong and Laura finds herself away from the office when a big accident shuts down the interstate. Laura takes to the backroads, and near the small town of Keetonville, she finds herself at the Crossroads, a small cafe run by two elderly ladies named Mernalene and Hassalene. Then it begins to hail. Merna and Hassle take Laura in, give her some of their wonderful coffee and food, and there she meets Graham Keeton who works for the county disaster squad. Merna and Hassle insist Laura must return – and won’t take no for an answer.

Laura finally gets the magazine to press with the help of an old friend and things are looking good for her on the professional front, but problems in her personal life are about to overwhelm her. Laura’s longtime boyfriend calls her to break off their relationship. Her father, who has settled in his parents’ old home near Keetonville, can’t seem to shake off his grief following his wife’s death and is not taking care of himself. Laura must juggle her father, her job and a million other things and has no time at all to relax, rest and just be herself. One day, Laura finds her mother’s Bible and opens it to an underlined verse in Jeremiah: This is what the Lord says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls”. Laura finds more and more occasions to go to the Crossroads, and wonders if her mother is trying to tell her something.

The Lonestar Cafe is told in first person and we get to know Laura intimately. She is a delightful character and I really empathized with her. There’s not a bit of the Chick-Lit ditz about Laura at all. Rather than obsessing about clothes and shopping, she has to deal with realistic problems, ones that most women face in their lives: aging parents, the longing to put down roots, struggles balancing personal and professional life. It’s a shame she’s the only fully developed character in the book.

Graham is the books’ titular hero, but since we see him only through Laura’s eyes, he remains a shadowy figure. He has the obligatory horrid incident in his past, but he’s not a jerk or a woman-hater. He’s a beta hero, but not a particularly vivid or memorable one. He’s nice, but other than that, there’s not much I can say about him.

The other characters, especially Laura’s father are more vivid and interesting. The author spends more time on Laura’s relationship with her father and her discovery that she has roots in Keetonville. Mernalene and Hasselene are quirky without being silly or cutsey. At the end of the book, it looks like they might lose the Crossroads, but deus ex machina comes to the rescue and it ends happily for everyone.

Laura Draper and the setting are the best things about The Lonestar Cafe. The romance is very much a minor part of the story. If you enjoy books about small towns and eccentric characters, you will like this very much. Urban gals probably should stick to Chick Lit.