Leslie VandeKeere never planned to become a farmer's wife.
When financial ruin and a fragile marriage push her out of Vancouver and onto her husband Dan's family farm in Holmes Crossing, Alberta, Leslie arrives with a plan: survive one year, patch things up, then head home. Simple enough - except nothing about casserole-bearing neighbors, a formidable mother-in-law named Wilma, and a husband she's still learning to trust turns out to be simple at all.
Sharp-tongued, self-aware, and fiercely protective of her little family, Leslie is a city girl navigating chicken coops, family meetings, and the vast, open skies of rural Alberta. She loves Dan. She wants their marriage to work. But the wounds from his emotional affair don't heal overnight, and belonging - to a place, to a family, to a faith she doesn't quite share yet - can't be forced.
What Leslie doesn't count on is Holmes Crossing quietly working its way under her skin. The neighbors who show up when it matters. The sisters-in-law who surprise her. The wide Alberta horizon that makes her stop the car just to breathe it in. And a God who seems to meet her in the ordinary, unhurried moments of farm life when she least expects it.
Funny, honest, and quietly moving, The Only Best Place is a story about a woman who arrives resistant and leaves transformed - not because life got easier, but because she let herself be loved by more than she bargained for. With warmth, humor, and a faith grounded in the beautiful mess of everyday life, Carolyne Aarsen invites readers into a place where second chances take root in unlikely soil, and where love, when tended patiently, grows deeper than you ever imagined possible.
