Sheila Curran is the author of Dana Lively Is Falling Down. She lives in Tallahassee, Florida.

Like the legendary London Bridge, Diana Lively has been transplanted from England to the Arizona desert. Also, she seems to be falling down.

Trained as an architect, top in her class, she makes dollhouses. Widowed young and beautiful, she distrusted people who were kind to her, and married Ted, the one man who wasn't. Maybe it's a good thing that Diana Lively's life is suddenly out of her control.

Billionaire American Wally "The Ammo King" Gold also lost a spouse young, and in memory of his beloved Anglophile wife, Wally wants to fund Arthurian Studies at Oxford-and also to bring back to Arizona an expert consultant for his King Arthur Theme Park. Ted Lively, Arthurian scholar, fond of sherry and pretty undergraduates when he can take time off from belittling his wife, most definitely does not want to go and live among the barbarians of Arizona. But Oxford, eager to please Wally, gives him no choice.

So the Livelys are off to Phoenix, where Diana pictures deadly scorpions, tarantulas and snakes, and Ted bewails the loss of his children's perfect accents. And yet, in this most unlikely place, in the most surprising ways, Diana is about to discover that the happiness she thought was lost forever can shower down on her again, can flood her dry life like a lake in the desert, and make it bloom.