Listened to twice, almost

Hope Was Here
by Joan Baur

This will make you cry even if you never shared the experiences she describes. and if you did, you'll cry even harder.

But it's not a sad book, not at all.  It's funny--how can a story of two expatriate New Yorkers running a small diner in the middle of Cheese Land Wisconsin not be?  Hope is a girl of nearly endless optimism, and she's out to conquer the  world...or at least satisfy the people at the counter, growling for coffee and hash browns.  She's the waitress with the dazzling smile and the (nearly) unquenchable optimism, and she's on the job.