The Magic of Cape Disappointment


Readers’ Favorite 2018 Award winner – Honorable Mention – for the Chick Lit category

Foreword Reviews’ INDIES Book of the Year Award – Honorable Mention – in Romance for 2015. 

A Magical Romance Novel

A Cape Disappointment romance novel! Escape to a quaint, modern-day, Pacific Northwest fishing village in this delightful romance novel about a woman coming to terms with ancient legends and destiny. This Cape Disappointment romance novel won’t disappoint!

Readers will laugh and cry as they escape to Cape Disappointment and discover the magic, romance, and history for themselves.

Is it possible that love is the most powerful magic of all?

Growing up, her family insisted upon her destiny as a powerful healer based on a two-hundred year old prophecy. But Kay Baker was always more interested in forging her own path.

After completing medical school, she’s ready to leave her “medicine woman” status behind in favor of a new life in New York City.

However, Kay finds herself back in her hometown near Cape Disappointment after tragedy strikes—facing a new set of responsibilities and the legends she’s tried so hard to leave behind.

As the truth behind her powerful destiny is revealed, Kay discovers that magic is hiding everywhere—even among life’s greatest disappointments.

couple standing by the ocean at sunset
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Book Club Guide

  • All parents and grandparents have hopes, dreams, and expectations for their children and grandchildren, and Kay’s are no different. When those ideas conflict with the person they are bestowed upon, that’s when everyone involved is tested. How did the expectations of family impact your life? Did you relate to Kay?
  • Much of the romance novel focuses on history and legends. After reading the novel were you inspired to learn more about Lewis and Clark? If you did read more about Lewis or the legends in other books, what was the most interesting thing?
  • Often it’s our friends who know us better than we know ourselves. What did you think about Kay’s friends? Did they know her better than she knew herself? Have you ever made a decision that your friends cautioned you about, and then later wished you had taken their advice?
  • Sometimes, our greatest disappointments later result in the best course corrections of our lives (although of course, we never know that at the time). Do you have one of those moments in your life that you occasionally think about, where you’re now glad that you didn’t get what you hoped for and instead ended up with something infinitely better? Which characters in this Cape Disappointment romance novel had other plans before fate intervened in their lives aside from Kay? Do you believe in signs?
  • What did you think Sam looked like? Did you have the same picture as others in your book club? Are you surprised?
  • Do you think we have one soul mate or that there are many possible soul mates?
  • This Cape Disappointment romance novel focuses around the romantic coastal location of Cape Disappointment itself. A place with a fascinating history, dramatic cliffs, dangerous waters with frequent shipwrecks, combined with a sense of being a world away makes for a wonderful setting for any novel. Have you ever been to Cape Disappointment? If so, what was your favorite experience there? If not, what are you waiting for! 🙂
  • Typically romance novels center around a couple that have no idea they are soul mates, yet Sam is confident about it from the very beginning and Kay puts the pieces together relatively early on as well. What if your soul mate just appeared in your life, like in the TV Series Soulmates? Would you leave the relationship you are in to be with the other person or would you stay given your history? Would you want to know if the person you are with is actually or soul mate or would you prefer not to know? What if your soul mate was 40 years older than you? Or from another country and didn’t speak the same language? Would you move your life 10,000 miles to be with them?
  • Both Kay and Sam respond very differently to the forces of ‘fate’ throughout much of the novel. At one significant point in the story, their views nearly reverse when Kay feels destined to protect the community and Sam wants her to leave with him. Can someone believe in fate and yet also resist it?
  • In this Cape Disappointment romance novel, the setting plays an important role in the story. If you were to write a romance novel, where you set the story and why? Not everyone would choose to place the setting of their romance novel in a contemporary fishing village, but Julie thinks there’s some magic at Cape Disappoinment. She hopes readers will visit the area to experience it for themselves and hopefully find a little romance and magic of their own!
  • How do soul mates balance each other out? In many ways, Sam and Kay have different skills and strengths that compensate for what the other lacks. Is it balance in differences that makes people soul mates or similarity?

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Learn More

Several readers have asked for a page that answers their questions about the book, so by popular demand, this is it! Julie thinks that the best part of writing fiction is imagining alternate worlds and mixing up a small echo of reality with a very large dose of fiction to create a fun, magical reading escape.

(Careful, might be spoilers if you haven’t finished the book!) Below are some of the main reader questions so far:

  • Is Cape Disappointment a real place? Yes! It is indeed. Cape Disappointment is on the southern Washington State coast, bordering the Pacific Ocean and the Columbia River. It’s a few hours away from both Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon. Julie has visited the area several times and came up with the idea for the novel on her first camping trip to the area. Of course, Julie took creative liberties with many regional descriptions, because that’s the fun of fiction- creating a world that looks enough like ours to feel familiar, yet still has the magic of a whole new world that we can only visit in the pages of a novel. Julie was inspired to write a Cape Disappointment romance novel on her first visit there.
  • What about the legends? Coyotes and Ravens do feature prominently in Pacific Northwest legends, however, the keelalle legends in the book are completely imagined by the author. To learn more about the Native American legends, there are several books about the legends of different tribes and some grouped by regions like the Pacific Northwest or Columbia River area. The concept of a ‘veil between worlds’ is a new spin on an ancient idea considered throughout the world in many cultures. The legends created for the novel echo universal legends throughout the ages and across many cultures, as humans have always told stories to explain the world around them.
  • And Meriwether Lewis- What’s the real story? If we were playing ‘four truths and a lie‘ these are the truth: Meriwether lived at Monticello while working as secretary for President Jefferson, Meriwether’s cause of death is still debated today, the Lewis family do want to solve the mystery of his death, and there are over four hundred days of missing journal entries by Lewis during the expedition. The lie is that Meriwether had a wife, since he never married. There’s also nothing in the journals about anyone in the Corps meeting a medicine woman while wintering at Fort Clatsop. For those interested, there are several books about Meriwether Lewis to learn more about him, including a “historic crime scene investigation” book about the 1996 Coroner’s Inquest into his case. Lewis and Clark wintered at Fort Clatsop for almost four months. There are also many resources  (including historic sites) available to learn more about the Lewis and Clark Expedition, their time at Fort Clatsop, and the many people they met along the way.
  • Is Chinook Jargon a real language? Yes and the phrases in the book are from Chinook Jargon dictionaries. While Chinook Jargon is not the language of the Clatsop, it was the primary trading language of the Columbia River area and was likely the language that Lewis and Clark used at the time to communicate with the Clatsop and Chinook tribes during their winter on the Columbia River in 1805. Since it was used in trade, the language is more documented than others which is it was selected for use in the novel. The idea that animals can speak Chinook Jargon is, obviously, completely imagined by the author!
  • Was there a Cascadia tsunami in 1700? Many think so. There is some evidence that there was a Cascadia earthquake followed by tsunami-like floods in 1700. There are many articles and resources available on the Cascadia subduction zone, for those interested, including some estimating a high probability of another earthquake occurring within the next fifty years.

If you’d like a question of yours answered, please drop a line!

Get Your Copy Today!

Paperback available from Amazon,Barnes and Noble, IndieBound (for book retailers paperback is available via Ingram, Baker & Taylor, and NACSCORP).

Ebook available from Kindle, Nook, Scribd, Kobo, iBooks, Playster, !ndigo, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, and Overdrive.

ISBN-13: 9781515097884 (paperback), 9781386431381 (ebook)

ISBN-10: 1515097889 (paperback)

ASIN: B07JYH5V57 (ebook)

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Check it out at the Library!