THIS NEVER SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED

The "Borscht Belt" was a playful name stuck to the Jewish resort scene in the New York Catskill Mountains. Almost 2,000 hotels, bungalows and rooming houses held over 50,000 rooms in a triangle roughly bordered by Monticello, Liberty and Ellenville and their surroundings - the largest concentration of resort accommodations in the world during the heyday of the 1950s and '60s. One million people from the Greater New York area visited every summer for a season that stretched from Memorial Day through Labor Day, with a brief 10 days in the Fall for the Jewish High Holidays. Some resorts were year round with massive recreational facilities of all kinds. Almost 200 famous entertainers, athletes, and politicians played there, many getting their start in those hotels. The scene was depicted in Dirty Dancing and Mrs. Maisel. This Never Should Have Happened (and That Catskill Summer more-so) take place in the Catskills.

Cheap jet travel, the Civil Rights Act opening accommodations everywhere to everyone, and the exorbitant overhead of full-time entertainment and American Plan meals (3-4/day!) ended the attraction and financial viability of those resorts by the 1970s. Most of them burned down or fell down after bankruptcy. A few hotels and bungalow colonies were bought up and are now operated by Jewish religious groups, but they are not operated as shown in the movies anymore. Villa Roma, an originally Italian resort, still does operate as a hotel and bungalow establishment in the old Borscht Belt model, but it is not Jewish. It serves as an inspiration for a hotel in my novels. You can read the details in my memoir A Catskill Carnival. 

Long before the movie Dirty Dancing, the Borscht Belt resorts were famous as a place to find a date and possibly a mate. It was a hotbed of hot beds, and by the mid-1960s the sexual revolution was in full flower, changing the rules and roles of the mating game. Dirty Dancing is fiction, as much Hollywood as truth. In fact, though it depicts that '60s era in the hotels, it was actually filmed in the South, after the death of the Borscht Belt. My books are set in that same place in that same era, only they are much truer to the life in our "Love by the week and the weekend" culture. And all but two of the places depicted really exist.

This Never Should Have Happened stands on its own as a complete engaging story. Reading it together with That Catskill Summer gives it more impact. I would recommend reading the Lived-In Love series in order: That Catskill Summer first, then This Never Should Have Happened. And maybe the third book, when that comes out.

This Never Should Have Happened is different from most romance novels: It's love from a man's point of view, though there are strong female characters. As with all the Lived-In Love series, it's a realistic portrayal of love and intimacy. In the real world love is messy. This story is deep and it's nuanced. There is a bit of "open door" sexuality, but nothing graphic and any sexuality is purely consensual between adults, nothing kinky. Are you ready for later-in-life affairs? Because love definitely doesn't just die with aging. If anything it matures. BookAnon's review of That Catskill Summer placed the heat somewhere between "jalapeno to habanero". This sequel follows that pattern. 

We all hope for do-overs when we realize a mistake or have a preventable loss, as much in love as anything else. "Second chance" refers to the delicious opportunity and the perilous challenge of getting to try it again with the person of your affection. This Never Should Have Happened is very much about later-in-life second chances, some of which really are a gift, and some of which really never should have happened!