Ten years on a barstool. One woman who refused to let him stay there.

Cole McCullough has spent a decade waiting for something he doesn't believe will ever come. Every night, the same honky tonk. The same bourbon. The same stool that lists to the left. He has built a life out of wanting nothing, needing nothing, expecting nothing from anyone. It's the only way he knows how to survive.

Then Emmeline walks in.

She's wearing a dress the color of wheat fields in August. She orders elderflower gin in a bar that has never seen elderflower anything. She asks his name. She asks him to stay. And for the first time in twenty years, Cole isn't sure he can say no.

Barstool Heart is a quiet, deeply felt novel about the difference between waiting and showing up, between running and staying, between a key and a ring. Set against the backdrop of rural Texas, it follows two people learning to build something that doesn't fall apart, one porch stair, one hammer strike, one unlocked door at a time.

For readers who believe that love is not a feeling but a choice. And that the bravest thing a person can do is knock.