Book Title: THINGS WE CANNOT KEEP
Character Name: Tess Holcomb (aka Teresa Baker)
How would you describe your family or your childhood?
I grew up between a rock and a hard place. My childhood had its bright spots though. Granny Baker’s warm hugs, biscuits and gravy, and her childhood memories of Gulf Shores. When she died, my only safe place disappeared with her. I left my hometown in Wilder, Tennessee the night I turned eighteen and never looked back. I’ve always said it was my choice. But sometimes I wonder if I was just escaping something I didn’t know how to survive.
What was your greatest talent?
Fixing heirloom timepieces. There’s nothing I love more than taking apart all the delicate instrumentation, cleaning it, and making it run right again. Those gears and springs are comforting in their predictability.
Significant other?
I let myself fall in love once. With someone who knew how to make promises sound permanent. That story gets filed under “greatest disappointment”.
Biggest challenge in relationships?
Considering I’ve been living under an assumed name for nearly two decades, I’d say it’s hard to let people close when you can’t even tell them your real name.
Where do you live?
Fairhope, Alabama in an apartment above Timeless Restoration. My pride and joy. Timeless is a place my mentor, Amos, and I created. It’s this incredible workshop where people bring their treasured heirlooms to be restored by the team of expert craftspeople that I’ve assembled.
Do you have any enemies?
I fled my hometown at eighteen for a couple of reasons. But whether those reasons still remember me after all this time is a different question. After all, they promised to make me pay for my choices no matter how much time had passed.
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?
Where I’m at now is everything. The clients who come here. The stories they share. The craftspeople I’ve curated. I’ve built my whole identity around this place. It was a pretty great hide out until it got that national media attention a few months back. It’s amazing how fast a carefully crafted identity can crumble when you’re ducking news cameras.
Do you have children, pets, both, or neither? Not unless you count unclaimed heirlooms or the estate sale pieces I collect.
What do you do for a living?
I restore treasured timepieces, consult with experts in various fields, and make sure Timeless is an awesome work environment. I juggle all of that while making sure Becky, my office manager, doesn’t launch too many wild marketing ideas while I’m holed up in my office. Like leaking stories to the media…
Greatest disappointment?
Elliot Sullivan. Ex-best friend/secret boyfriend/backstabber. I should have known better than to let myself fall for someone as smooth talking as he is.
Greatest source of joy?
Seeing our clients holding their newly restored heirlooms, whether it is an old dollhouse, a restored painting, or watch that hasn’t been running for years.
What do you do to entertain yourself or have fun?
I like to visit estate sales to furnish my apartment. I enjoy giving these items a second life even if I don’t know the stories behind them. Beyond that, I like spending time with Amos. He’s the one who helped me start this new life of mine. And thankfully, he’s not one to ask too many questions.
What is your greatest personal failing, in your view?
Trusting someone I knew to be an expert at shirking responsibility when times got tough. Back then he was the one person who seemed to seek out my time and attention. It was harder to resist than I’d like to admit. But I won’t make the same mistake again.
What keeps you awake at night?
Recently, a mystery package arrived on my doorstep with my old name. And not long after that, Elliot Sullivan waltzed into my workshop like the past eighteen years hadn’t happened. He says he had nothing to do with the package’s arrival. I’ll let you guess how much I believe him. I should probably open it already. But some things, once unsealed, can’t be put back.
What is the most pressing problem you have at the moment?
Elliot strolling back into my workshop like he owned it. The package – I can avoid. Him? Not so much. The way he unraveled my careful control in less than five minutes…even harder to ignore.
Is there something that you need or want that you don’t have? For yourself or for someone important to you?
I restore heirlooms with beautiful histories attached to them. I tell myself that’s enough. But maybe what I really want is something worth passing down. A story that doesn’t feel like something I have to hide.
Why don’t you have it? What is in the way?
Heirlooms are passed down to beloved family members with beautiful stories attached to them. My childhood was a minefield. My family is a mess. There’s nothing from my past worth passing down. I guess I’ve found it easier to focus on other people’s lives than my own. But my old pal Amos seems to think it’s not too late to make a change.
THINGS WE CANNOT KEEP by Amanda Cox
Contemporary Southern Literary Fiction for Book Clubs with Family Secrets and Redemption
Tess has built a new life in Alabama, repairing timepieces and avoiding her troubled past as she restores her customers’ family heirlooms–treasures she never had herself. When a mysterious package arrives addressed to Teresa Baker, the name she abandoned, Tess finds herself drawn into a puzzle that threatens her delicate peace.
Then Elliot Sullivan appears at her door after eighteen years, and Tess knows he’s after more than just forgiveness. She doesn’t trust his motives, but it becomes apparent that he could be the key to uncovering the origin of the mystery package and its cryptic contents.
Tess has found safety in her simple life, but reuniting this lost heirloom to its rightful recipient requires her to come out of hiding. Each clue leads to a different place around the world, and each story reveals hidden truths. The question is whether she’s brave enough to face what she might find–and whether the man beside her can be trusted with what matters most.
Award-winning author Amanda Cox crafts a crosscontinental journey of connection, healing, and belonging.
Romance Western | Christian Contemporary [ Revell, On Sale: August 18, 2026, Trade Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780800746629 / eISBN: 9781493453894 ]
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About Amanda Cox
Amanda Cox is a blogger and a curriculum developer for a national nonprofit youth leadership organization, but her first love is communicating through story. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Bible and theology and a master’s degree in professional counseling. Her studies and her interactions with hurting families over a decade have allowed her to create multidimensional characters that connect emotionally with readers. She lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with her husband and their three children.
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