Meet Casey Feldstein

I have been so busy talking about the count down to Yarn to Go, the first book in the Yarn Retreat series which comes out next Tuesday, I realized I never really introduced Casey Feldstein. Casey has had a rather spotty career history and has a reputation for not sticking with things. She knew after a semester at law school it wasn’t for her. She tried being a substitute teacher and it didn’t work out. She worked as a dessert chef in a friend’s restaurant, but it went out of business. Then she turned to temp work and did things like spritzing perfume on women walking into department stores and handing out samples of chewing gum on a downtown street corner in Chicago.

The only temp job she really liked was working for a detective agency even if her boss, Frank Shaw was a bit of curmudgeon. Mostly what she did was phone work. It turned out she had a real talent for getting people to give up information. Little did she know that the detective agency experience and Frank would both come in handy in her new life.

Deciding that she needed a fresh start, she relocated to her Cadbury by the Sea, California. Her aunt, an actress whose main claim to fame was that she was the spokesperson for Tidy Soft toilet paper, offered Casey her guest house in the picturesque small town on the tip of the Monterey Peninsula. Casey’s aunt also helped her get set up in baking desserts at a local restaurant and baking muffins for the local coffee spots in town. Cadbury has lots of fog and cloudy skies and is a real coffee town.

It might have all just been la di dah happy, but Casey’s aunt is killed in a hit and run accident shortly after Casey moves into the guest house. It turns out that her aunt has left everything to Casey, including her business putting on yarn retreats.

The common question is what is a yarn retreat. Well, the idea of a retreat is that a group of people go someplace out of the way and spend time developing an interest or talent. The yarn part refers to what kind of interest they work on.

The out of the way place is Vista Del Mar, a moody hotel and conference center across from where Casey lives. No manicured lawns here. The grounds are filled with tall Monterey Pines and wind shaped Monterey Cypress and ground cover that grows by itself. Nearby, waves crash against a rocky shore.

Well, I don’t want to give away too much, but let me just say that Casey who doesn’t know a knitting needle from a crochet hook, finds herself up to her elbows in yarn, murder and dessert.