There’s something to be said for literary lightness.

Sure, sometimes we like to delve into dense tomes packed with esoteric vocabulary and deep themes and complicated plotting, all wound together in a stylistic experiment. “Great” literature and all that. But there’s value in relative simplicity when it comes to books.

Please do not conflate simplicity with simplistic, however – that’s not what I’m talking about. I just believe that there can be just as much merit to a breezy read as you’ll find in something with ostensibly loftier aspirations.

“Flying Solo” (Ballantine, $28), the new novel from Linda Holmes, is very much the former … and that’s a good thing. This is a book about a woman who returns to her hometown out of the twin senses of love and obligation. The reasons for her return are steeped in sadness, but as her stay proceeds, she finds herself learning more about the people she loves … and about herself.

As she stands at the crossroads of her old life and her new one, she is struck by the dichotomy of past and possibility – represented in this case by a relic from one person’s history whose deeper meaning is both obvious and opaque. To wit: it means something, but she’s not certain what. And we’ve all been there, yes?