Each chooses a new path that is individual and yet interwoven with another character. This makes the plot complex and continue to intrigue the reader.

Jerri told me that she writes what she knows or has encountered. One of the characters must deal with cancer, which Jerri had been diagnosed with and survived. One character’s husband was killed in a freak accident. Another is a doctor whose patients simply want pills and surgeries instead of working to develop healthy lives. Another cannot have children and another is a failed song writer and performer who has also failed at love.

Many of the scenes occur in a coffee shop, the Java Bean Factory, an eccentric space that is also somewhat magical. Sibyl owns the coffee shop. As a child, “[h]er father held her hand as they entered an enchanted shop.” This was Sibyl’s first trip to a coffee shop as she was a child, filled with the aromas of coffee, bread and chocolate pastries. She then fell in love with the dream of owning a coffee shop. She and her creative sister Em, recently widowed, run the café. As the author feels that her writing is derived ‘from something higher,” so Sibyl has visions and dreams which foreshadow aspects of the plot. The intuition of the characters helps lead them to new and healthier choices in their lives, away from the pain which has engulfed them.

I asked Jerri about the coffee shop. “Although I'm a tea drinker, I love quaint, quirky coffee shops. Something about either drink brings people together, in this case, the characters, thus the Java Bean Factory is born. Also, regarding quirkiness or uniqueness, I have used this coffee shop in a later book, Alice Black. There have been several instances where I’ve incorporated places and characters in cameo appearances throughout my different novels.”

As well as coffee shops, Art plays a role in the novel, in its discussion of color and its meanings. Van Gogh is the favorite artist of Em and of the author. Em travels to Amsterdam and views his paintings in the Van Gogh Museums. Much of the plot comes together there in ways that have been envisioned and yet are spontaneous.

One of the characters, Mark is also visiting Amsterdam on his way to a workshop in Poland about reinvigorating the spirit through healthy lifestyle choices, some less typical,  such as cold plunges, such as cold showers and bathing in winter waters. On the way, he visits a recently discovered relative who is a concentration camp survivor. Shown to him by his elderly relative, the pictures of relatives who were murdered by the Nazis is retold as a new pain, “as if he had just experienced the tortures, he and his loved ones had endured all over again.” The pain of the past is never erased. Resiliency and vision help forge a life worth living for all the characters, no matter the source of their pain.

An excellent plot structure is the network of chance encounters from which the characters’ decisions unfold and intertwine.  As Jerri told me, “You might say that as the characters found their true purpose, they climbed the chakra ladder or became the right balance of all the chakras—a personal and collective evolution.”

Delicious food comes from the Java Bean Café. I tried to imagine new items on the menu and developed this recipe for Breakfast Pizza, which I know would add to the aroma and flavors of the cafe!