Book Title: MINE AGAIN
Character Name: Ranger Beckham
How would you describe your family or your childhood?
My family is the best. My Pop is a retired Hall of Fame baseball player, but my mom—everyone calls her Peach—she’s the real rock of our family and the person who runs the show at Deep Roots Farm. I also have an incredible daughter Lucy, who’s 13 going on 25. I’m trying to give her the same kind of childhood I had—grounded but with enough Montana adventure to keep life interesting. She’s caught the biggest fish of the summer so far!
What was your greatest talent?
I knew from a pretty young age I wasn’t going to be following in Pop’s footsteps and playing baseball, so I started playing guitar in an attempt to be good at something. I’m grateful every day that it turned into a career for me.
Significant other?
I’m recently divorced and causally seeing someone at the moment.
Biggest challenge in relationships?
I think I’m discovering that I fall too fast.
Where do you live?
I live in Sunflower, Montana, about 45 minutes west of Bozeman. I have a plot of land that abuts our family farm. The homestead cabin I live in originally belonged to my maternal grandparents, but I’ve done some updates to it over the years, while still maintaining its charm.
Do you have any enemies?
I try not to, but my daughter Lucy’s goats are not my number one fans.
How do you feel about the place where you are now? Is there something you are particularly attached to, or particularly repelled by, in this place?
I love living in Montana, and Sunflower in particular. I don’t ever see myself leaving. I like being invested in my community and in the lives of my neighbors—and there is nothing better than a snowy Montana winter—except maybe one of our spectacular Autumns.
Do you have children, pets, both, or neither?
I mentioned my daughter, Lucy, who almost fourteen and is about to start high school in the fall. She’s the one responsible for my recently having become a cat dad. She tries to convince me to adopt every stray she comes across.
What do you do for a living?
I’m the band director at Sunflower High School, where I also teach music. In the summers, I work the land at Deep Roots Farm. I really have the best of both worlds.
Greatest disappointment?
Not being able to make my marriage work. We’re still best friends and great at coparenting, but I can’t help feeling that the divorce was a failure on my part.
Greatest source of joy?
Hands down, watching my daughter grow up. She’s the sunshine of my life.
What do you do to entertain yourself or have fun?
I love to be outside. I’m a runner, and I enjoy hiking, fishing, and just puttering around the farm, doing what needs to be done. I enjoy spending time with the animals, too. Goats, aside.
What is your greatest personal failing, in your view?
Not having a marriage like Peach and Pops. They’ve been together for more than forty years and they’re still in love and best friends. I wanted that so badly, but it wasn’t meant to be, I guess.
What keeps you awake at night?
The thought that I may never have what my parents have. I love my life and I’m grateful for it, but I can’t help thinking it would be even better if I had someone to share it with.
What is the most pressing problem you have at the moment?
I met someone remarkable and the biggest problem I have now is—I want more with her. But she’s only here on a temporary assignment. I think I’m in for a devastating heartbreak at the end of her stay. But I can’t seem to help myself.
Is there something that you need or want that you don’t have? For yourself or for someone important to you?
I already have so much, I try not to want more. But Delilah—the woman I mentioned who is working in Sunflower temporarily? Off the record? I really wouldn’t mind if she decided to stay. And I want my ex-wife Florence to find someone who makes her happy in the way I couldn’t. She’s had a hard life and she deserves that.
Why don’t you have it? What is in the way?
I suppose you could say – I’m in my own way. I would never ask Delilah to give up her already full life for me, no matter how hard I’ve fallen for her. It would have to be her idea to stay in Sunflower, and unfortunately, I just don’t see a way for that to happen.
MINE AGAIN by Andrea Thome
Sunflower #1
Delilah Spencer is a rolling stone. A big city attorney from Chicago on a temporary work assignment in Sunflower, Montana.
Ranger Beckham’s Sunflower roots run deep. Three generations to be exact. The high school band director and single father is adrift, fresh out of a marriage of convenience. He’s all but given up on finding true love.
Until he bumps into Delilah, the fixer with trust issues who has a hard and fast rule: never get attached to the places she visits or the people in them. They strike a deal when the chemistry between them burns too hot to ignore, convincing themselves they’ll be able to part as friends when Delilah’s gig is up, no matter how scorching things get between them.
But the slower pace in tight-knit Sunflower is a balm for Delilah’s restless soul, and it becomes impossible to imagine leaving Ranger or Montana behind.
Will Delilah break her own rules and finally put down roots, or will she cut and run when her contract is up, leaving Ranger and the life she never knew she wanted in the rearview mirror?
A small-town, friends-to-lovers, found-family, single-dad romance, Mine Again is the first book in the Sunflower Series.
Romance Small Town [ Hewell Enterprises, On Sale: October 13, 2026, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9798993867311 / eISBN: 9790997850482 ]
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About Andrea Thome
Andrea Thome almost graduated from college (just three credits shy!) before she was hired away to start working as a sports reporter for a local television station. She went on to anchor both sports and news for affiliates in her hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, where she interviewed and fell in love with her husband of almost thirty years, Hall of Fame Baseball player, Jim Thome.
She’s happy with the way things worked out.
Andrea won both Ben Franklin and NAIA awards for her popular Hesse Creek Trilogy, set in Eastern Tennessee and Aspen, two of her favorite places in the world. In the black hole that was 2020-2021, she produced three new manuscripts in an effort to avoid thinking about the state of the world.
The first of those books is coming to a bookshelf near you in October 2026!
An avid baseball and hockey fan, Andrea also loves hiking, traveling, and cheering on her two children, whose remarkable achievements have designated her to fourth place in the family pecking order.
She prefers to think of it as batting clean up.
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