Tess Has a Broken Heart
Friendship and tea ease worries, wine makes merry the heart and love creates fools out of us all ...
Tess, her best friend Zara, and Zara's daughter, Zénnie, move from Los Angeles to Calgary, Alberta and decide to rent an enormous house, which they can only afford by getting subtenants.
Into their lives enter a kooky English woman who "... has no real-life ambitions, but likes writing stories and occasionally makes a few quid out of them ..." and five gorgeous men—two are brothers, the rest are cousins—originally from Namibia.
Tess is always in her own mind; slightly neurotic, but loveable. She has a hard time letting things go and letting change in—especially the love of a younger man who is eager to prove her doubts and fears wrong.
Her girlfriends worry, not that she'd get hurt, but that she would be too afraid to take the chance and miss out on something wonderful.
Tess Has a Broken Heart, and Other Comedies Full of Errors, is a story about deep friendships, the older woman's desire to stay relevant, and beautiful men with deep souls who often prove women wrong when they think they are so smart and have all the answers.
We all know how hard it is to prove our worth in a world full of fast ideas and even faster minutes going by. Our expectations of ourselves only seem to highlight that we are far from perfect.
When I came up with the idea of Tess, these things were swarming around in my head and had me thinking about the strength we find in our friendships. The wonderful thing about our friends is that while they may not be able to solve our problems, they help us get through them. And although I love my male friends very dearly, there is just something about the friendships between women.
Only a girl can understand the insecurities and fears a woman experiences in her relationship with a partner. Girlfriends cry together over major catastrophes and minuscule nothings. We know when something is up or wrong; women are born with extraordinary intuition.
My leading lady, Tess, who operates in a state of self-questioning, denial and putting up barriers, illustrates that even in our (futile) efforts to avoid heartbreak, we all long for the same thing in the end: to be loved unconditionally. And through it all, her girlfriends are there to encourage and admonish, as only girlfriends are able to do.