Literary Fiction · Free kit
The Road to Tender Hearts
PJ Halliday is sixty-three, sober-ish on a good week, and still eating breakfast with the ex-wife who left him and the partner who replaced him. A lottery win a decade ago bought him time, not peace — and three heart attacks later, Pondville, Massachusetts, feels smaller than the grief he carries for his drowned daughter Kate. When his estranged brother’s grandchildren land in his lap after an unthinkable loss, PJ does what he has always done when life corners him: he gets in the car. With adult daughter Sophie, ten-year-old Luna (who is certain a soap opera star is her real father), nine-year-old Ollie, and Pancakes the nursing-home cat — rumored to sense when death is near — he heads west toward Michelle Cobb, the high school sweetheart he never stopped wondering about, and a retirement community called Tender Hearts in the Arizona desert.
“You don’t always get a map for the road back — sometimes you just keep driving until the landscape matches the courage you’re trying to grow.”
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The Road to Tender Hearts Icebreakers
Answer in under 30 seconds. These connect to the book’s themes without spoiling the story.
Personality Reveal
1. On a long drive, are you the person who needs silence, the DJ, or the one narrating every billboard?
Personality Reveal
2. When you’re grieving, do you prefer company that sits quietly nearby or company that tries to fix the mood?
Personality Reveal
3. Are you more likely to reconnect with an old flame from curiosity — or only if you’ve genuinely changed?
Funny & Light
4. What’s the worst snack you’ve ever brought on a road trip and still defended as “fine”?
Funny & Light
5. If your life were a soap opera, what ridiculous plot twist would your friends immediately believe about you?
Funny & Light
6. What’s the most chaotic thing you’ve ever traveled with — pet, instrument, plant, secret?
Would You Rather
7. Would you rather take a cross-country trip with your family with no playlist, or with no bathroom breaks?
Would You Rather
8. Would you rather eat every meal at a diner for a month, or never sit down for a meal again?
Would You Rather
9. Would you rather inherit a cat with a spooky reputation, or a car with a spooky check-engine light?
Hot Take
10. Hot take: staying friends with an ex is always a little bit about control. Agree or disagree?
Hot Take
11. Hot take: road trips reveal who people really are faster than living together. One sentence defense.
Hot Take
12. Hot take: humor about hard things is either survival skill or avoidance — never neutral. Which side are you on?
Personal Connection
13. What’s a place you’ve never visited but imagine would change you if you finally got there?
Personal Connection
14. Who is someone you’re still civil to even though the relationship is complicated — and why do you keep showing up?
Personal Connection
15. What’s one second chance you’re glad you took — or one you’re still afraid to ask for?