#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From Danielle Steel, a stirring novel about a woman striking out on her own after loss as her adult daughters try to find their own independent paths in life. Kezia Cooper Hobson, recently widowed, arrives in New York from San Francisco. Determined to make a fresh start, she has just completed the sale of her Pacific Heights home, not to mention her husband’s venture capital firm, and in doing so, is also freed from her responsibility as a board member of the company. Bringing with her only a few personal treasures, she is excited to move into the blank slate of a beautiful midtown penthouse, in the city that she has always loved. It is also where her two adult daughters now live. As Kezia settles into her new apartment, she meets her movie-star next-door neighbor, Sam Stewart, whose terrace borders hers. Just a couple of weeks after she arrives, however, a devastating crisis strikes New York City. Kezia and Sam find themselves connecting over their strong impulse to help those in need. As they share a life-changing experience of volunteering, a bond is sparked and a friendship is formed. Kezia’s daughters, Kate and Felicity, are taken aback by their mother’s new friendship, both more focused on their own love lives than hers. But Kezia is learning that the changes she’s making are just what she needs to open new horizons. In this powerful and moving new novel, Danielle Steel illuminates the importance of human connection and embracing brave change, proving it’s never too late for a brand-new start. Danielle Steel has been hailed as one of the world’s bestselling authors, with a billion copies of her novels sold. Her many international bestsellers include Without a Trace, The Whittiers, The High Notes, The Challenge, Suspects, Beautiful, and other highly acclaimed novels. She is also the author of His Bright Light , the story of her son Nick Traina’s life and death; A Gift of Hope , a memoir of her work with the homeless; Expect a Miracle , a book of her favorite quotations for inspiration and comfort; Pure Joy , about the dogs she and her family have loved; and the children’s books Pretty Minnie in Paris and Pretty Minnie in Hollywood . Chapter 1 Kezia Cooper Hobson flew from San Francisco to New York in first class, with four big suitcases that held the last of her things she was bringing to New York. Everything had been sent ahead weeks before, her clothes, all her mementos, her papers and personal treasures. Her furniture and art were due to arrive at the end of August. She’d been living at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco for the last month, while she concluded the sale of both her Pacific Heights home and her share of the venture capital firm she had inherited from her husband, Andrew Hobson, when he had died five years before, after a business trip to China. Twenty years older than Kezia, he was seventy-five at the time, vital, healthy, active, handsome, successful, and youthful for his age. The virus had hit him hard and he was dead in five days. He was a wonderful person from a wholesome Midwestern background. He had gone west to Stanford for college and business school, established his groundbreaking business in San Francisco, and remained there. Andrew Hobson had been one of the legends of early venture capital and one of its innovators in high-tech and biotech investments. The firm he had founded originally with two partners had been bought by a newer, larger venture capital firm, since Andrew’s partners had been older than he and were now well into their eighties. The life had gone out of Weintraub, Mills, and Hobson once Andrew was gone, with his incredible energy and constant daring new ideas. One of his partners was ill now, the other eager to retire, and the offer they received for the firm had come at the right time. Kezia had been active on the board since Andrew’s death. Originally from a small town in Vermont, the only child of a widowed and dedicated country doctor, Kezia had shared a thrilling life with Andrew. She had met him at a high-tech medical conference she went to in San Francisco, and married him not long after that, when she was thirty-five. The twenty years they had been married had been extraordinary, and profoundly happy. He had shown and taught and shared things with her that she would never have experienced otherwise. San Francisco had been the perfect small city to bring up their two daughters, with an agreeable cultural life and active business life for him of major international proportions with important investments in Asia, and good schools for their two girls. But once widowed at fifty-five, she found the city small and lifeless and limited. It was a lonely life for her. Everyone in her social circle was married, many of the men to younger women, much younger than Kezia by then. Her girls, Kate and Felicity, had gone east to college and never moved back to San Francisco. They loved living in New York, so Kezia