Tag Archives: bereavement

Abuse in Fiction, Christian Faith, Christian Fiction, Historical Fiction, Legal Fiction, Memoirs, Mysteries, Thrillers

Best Books Read in 2018 and First Books in 2019

January 5, 2019 BGBookworm Leave a comment

Best Books I Read and Reviewed in 2018

In 2018 I’ve probably read at least 200 novels from cover to cover . A few I decided not to finish. Many were entertaining but not outstanding. Some were excellent, but I didn’t have time to review them. Here are the books that had the deepest impact on me in 2018 with links to their reviews:

Best Books Read in 2018 and First Books in 2019 — Best Books Read in 2018

The Cross Examination of Oliver Finney (included in Introducing Randy Singer: Master of Legal Thrillers
The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Never Stop Walking: Memoir of an Adoptee (nonfiction) by Christiana Rickardsson
Legacy of a Pack Rat by Ruth Bell Graham (nonfiction)

Books I’ve Read So Far in 2019

These are the books I’ve read during the first four days of 2019. I will include some brief thoughts on each.

Until Now by Cristin Cooper

Billy met Bridget when she came into the diner he had unwillingly inherited. She was pregnant at 16 and homeless. She was hungry for the love her father never gave, and he kicked her out when he discovered she was pregnant. The college boy who seduced her thinking she was over 18 was not ready for marriage and told her to get an abortion. She had refused. It was in this situation she sought a warm place and a bit of food in Billy’s diner.

Billy was also lonely and unhappy, searching for love in the wrong way. He, too, had been rejected by one he thought loved him. Once Billy and the waitress Diane were aware of Bridget’s situation, they took her in and gave her work and a place to live above the diner. She raises her daughter Katie there and never marries. Billy hasn’t married any of his women friends, either. He wants to marry Bridget and she wants to marry him, but both are afraid to confess their love so they keep their relationship platonic. They center their attention on raising Katie, the one who brought them together.

The book opens on the day Katie is about to leave for college. Both Bridget and Billy wonder what will happen to their friendship then. The book jumps back and forth between time periods and relationships that both Bridget and Billy have as Katie grows up. I found the book engaging, but like most romances, a bit unrealistic. The ending, however, satisfied me.

Alert: There is some adult content.

The Rogue Reporter (A Police Procedural Mystery)

Written by Thomas Fincham (a pseudonym for Mobashar Qureshi, this is #2 in the Hyder Ali Series I started in 2014 with The Silent Reporter. The Rogue Reporter has many of the same characters, and I couldn’t put either book down. Fincham uses many of the same techniques he did in the first book. You can read my review of The Silent Reporter here. If you like suspense this author will keep you turning the pages.

Although I couldn’t stop reading this book, I had a tough time with a couple of torture scenes. They were brief, but it was hard to get through them. I don’t remember such scenes in the first book and I’m hoping the next books won’t have more than the normal violence and suspense you would expect to find in a detective novel. As I write this, the entire series is available in Kindle Unlimited where you can read it for free. You could probably finish it during the free trial period.

Eleventh Street: A Story of Redemption by Steven K Bowling

We first meet Lucas as he fights the Japanese Imperial Army and reminisces about the attack on Pearl Harbor he survived. We continue to see him fighting for his life in battlefield after battlefield throughout World War Two as he experiences the continual horrors of war. He had prayed plenty of genuine foxhole prayers, but after leaving the service he didn’t even go to church.

His older sister had married the brother of their church’s pastor, Buck Johnson, who simply called himself Pastor. As jobs got scarce in Kentucky, Pastor and most of those in his church, including Lucas’ other surviving siblings, moved to Hamilton Ohio to find work in the steel mills. Pastor converted the East Side Dance Hall into a church.

When he went to war, Lucas had left Maggie, the girl he loved, behind. She would not date him because she wanted to marry a God-fearing man and he didn’t appear to be one. When he returned to Hamilton, he sought Saturday night amusement at the East Side Dance Hall, since friends had recommended it. But it was quiet — except for a voice he recognized from the past: “Do you know the Lord today?…”

Maggie’s love had motivated Lucas to try to act like a Christian, but it was the Holy Spirit and Pastor that finally made him give his life to Christ at what had become the Eleventh Street Church. Lucas met the power of God through the ministry of Pastor. Pastor had no formal theological training, but it was obvious the Holy Spirit had called and equipped him.

We follow Lucas’s life and the life of Eleventh Street Church through three very different pastors. After Pastor’s death there was a gradual transition as new members joined the church and and older ones left. It becomes apparent to readers that the third pastor of the church after Pastor retired is a wolf in sheep’s clothing who is leading the flock astray.

This book’s message is relevant for today’s church. Often pastor search committees may be more interested in a candidate’s advanced degrees and administrative abilities than in his dependence upon God. So many churches today that want to grow look to new music, new methods, and even new doctrine, to attract new members. They sometimes begin to depend more on these new ideas than on the Holy Spirit.

What happened to the Eleventh Street Church could happen to any church that begins to depend upon and follow a charismatic leader more than Christ himself. This thought-provoking novel will be of most interest to Christians.

Agnes Hopper Shakes Up Sweetbriar by Carol Guthrie Heilman

Agnus Hopper did not move to Sweetbriar Manor retirement home willingly. But when her forgetfulness causes the home she had shared with her late husband Charlie to burn down, she became homeless. She moved in with her daughter, Betty Jo, but Betty Jo could only handle that for three months. She then took Agnus to Sweetbriar, assuming that she would make friends and soon be happy there. Agnus knew better.

Within a few days Agnus knows something is very wrong with Sweetbriar and that the manager is hiding something. She is determined to find out what is really going on as she gets to know the other residents. She is especially concerned about her best friend from high school, Pearl, who no longer recognizes her.

Throughout this book and its sequel, which I’m still reading, you’ll meet a quirky cast of senior citizens trying to make the best of where life has put them. Agnus and her friends do their best to bring down their crooked manager so they can live in peace. In the sequel, Agnus finds the body of one of her husband’s friends not far from his grave. She is determined to find out who killed him and why.

The Adventures of Agnes Hopper Series (2 Book Series)

I’m trying to make the most of my trial Kindle Unlimited membership. Most of the books I’ve read this year were free to read on KU. If you read a lot, why not try it? Just click here for your Kindle Unlimited trial.

Christian Fiction, Historical Fiction

Review of It is Well, How WWII Affected One Family

October 9, 2016 BGBookworm 6 Comments

It Is Well Shows How a Major War Can Tear a Family Apart

We’ve all heard the saying that war is hell. It Is Well, by James D. Shipman takes us to Wake Island when it is attacked by Japan and to Fort Benning, Georgia for a brutal look at basic training. Then we move to Europe for a taste of fighting in Sherman tanks. We also see how widowed father Jonathan Beecher worries about his two sons who are involved overseas and his daughter who seems headed for trouble at home. In the midst of all this he is fighting to save his hardware store. The war makes inventory hard to acquire and more expensive.

I don’t usually read war novels, but this book seemed the best of my six choices to read free on my Kindle before release this month, through my Prime membership, . The book is easy to understand, but I found it emotionally hard to read. The only book that affected me somewhat the same way was Andersonville, by Mac Kinlay Kantor.

The story of the Andersonville Fortress which the Confederates used as a concentration camp for Union prisoners during the Civil War is now available in DVD. My stomach and emotions would not be strong enough to watch it. I didn’t feel like eating for two weeks after I read it. Fortunately, It Is Well is not quite as graphic, but it is still a vivid picture of what those in war zones faced and what their families suffered at home during World War II.

The Beecher Family before Pearl Harbor

Jonathan Beecher lived with his two sons, Matthew and Luke, and his daughter Mary, in Snohomish, a small town near the coast of Washington State, just southeast of Everett. Jonathan’s wife Helen had died of cancer when the book opens and the family is together for the funeral. Helen had made Jonathan promise before she died that he would never remarry.

Although Jonathan urges Matthew to stay home and help him at the store, Matthew opts to return to his job as a civilian construction worker in the Philippines. He tells his father he will probably return home in April of 1942, when his job is done. He is then transferred to Wake Island.

Jonathan had had high hopes for Matthew. He was intelligent and knew how to apply himself, but had no desire to go to college as his father wanted him to. So Jonathan pinned his hopes on Mary, who was also intelligent enough to go to college.

She was very helpful at home and at the store, but she disappointed him by welcoming the attentions of a much older policeman Jonathan knew was up to no good. Mary appeared to be willing to accept the counsel of her father not to date him, but she then later eloped with him. As Jonathan suspected, he turned out to be abusive.

Luke, the younger son was lazy. He tried to get through life with his good looks and smooth talking. He was also a prankster who had little respect for authority and often got into trouble. His father worried he’d never be a productive person. He knew he couldn’t rely on Luke for any help at all.

Pearl Harbor Changes Everything for the Family

The Beecher family attended the Snohomish Free Methodist Church where Jonathan is a pillar. After the service on December 7, 1941, his friend the pastor introduces him to a new church member, Sarah Gilbertson, a widow with a daughter. He explains that Sarah will be helping out at the church, and that Jonathan may be seeing her on the days he mows the lawn.

As they are talking, Jonathan notices a commotion in the church yard with a crowd gathering. He goes to see what’s causing the excitement and learns the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor. The young men are already talking about enlisting . Jonathan knows Luke, and tells him not to go, or at least to wait a bit to see if they really will need him. Luke, being Luke, doesn’t listen. He has no idea what the Army is like. He believes it is one more adventure he can get through without much work or effort, so he enlists.

After he is living alone again, Jonathan is lonely. He and Sarah become friends with the understanding that they can never become more than friends. Sarah is not happy with that, and neither is Jonathan, but he feels bound before God by his promise to Helen not to marry again.

All Is Not Well at Home or Overseas or at Fort Benning

The Japanese invade Wake Island and Matthew had to learn to stand alone in the face of circumstances he’d never imagined he’d have to face. Luke discovers his disrespect for authority has severe consequences in the Army. For me, painful as it was to read, the important part of the book was watching these boys grow into what they needed to be.

Mary also learned that her disregard of her father’s guidance has made her life miserable and dangerous. Jonathan, meanwhile, knows he has fallen in love with Sarah and crosses the line by kissing her. Then he is filled with guilt and knows he needs to go back to just being friends. Sarah is not willing and breaks the relationship.

Meanwhile, the hardware store is more in debt every day. Supplies cost more because of the war that makes nails and other tools scarce. His customers have less to spend because of the war. Jonathan is trying to save his business.

The reader watches as the characters fight their own internal and external battles. Most begin to realize that the faith they have is weak or non-existent. They begin to seek God as best they can. They see how poorly equipped they are to survive physically or emotionally with no hope. By the end, all the characters have grown in character through what they have suffered.

M4 Sherman Tank Print ABH Pearl Harbor Acrylic Print Pearl Harbor Memorial Print USS Arizona Burning In Pearl Harbor Poster WW2 Sherman Tank Poster

My Opinion of It Is Well

This book is very well-written with complex characters whose lives you want to follow. The author shows every bit as much as he tells. Even though I don’t like war stories, especially battle scenes and human misery, this book drew me in and I couldn’t put it down.

I was a war baby sheltered in America. My own dad was rejected by the Army because he had flat feet, so I never heard any first-hand war stories. This book opened my eyes to what our infantry can experience in battle and the enormity of their physical and mental anguish. And I was only reading about it. They live it. No wonder so many come home unable to share their experiences except with their Army buddies!

Although though the plot was engaging, it was merely the vehicle to show us how the characters matured as they faced their inner and external demons. I won’t be a spoiler and tell you how the book ends. I’m hoping you will take this journey of discovery yourself.

The Kindle edition was the first Kindle novel I’ve read in a while that still has the X-Ray feature. I miss it when a book doesn’t have it — especially if it’s a book I want to review. Kindle books aren’t as easy to scan and flip through as paper books, and the X-Ray feature makes it easier to remember all the characters and important parts of the plot.

It Is Well: A Novel Andersonville Andersonville

My Recommendations

I would recommend It Is Well to those who enjoy realistic historical fiction, especially that which relates to World War II. There is blood and gore, as you might expect, and cruelty. It was hard for me to read those parts. I am more sensitive to these things than most people I know. Yet each of these episodes contributes to the growth of the characters. They aren’t there just to be sensational.

I would not recommend this to people suffering from depression since there aren’t many happy moments until near the end. These were not happy times. The book is realistic and doesn’t paint a rosy picture of war at home or abroad. It does portray the devastating effect war has on all involved, including civilians. If you’d like to better understand what we now call “the greatest generation,” I urge you to read this book.

It Is Well Shows How a Major War Can Tear a Family Apart: Book Review of It is Well by James Shipman — I’m designed to pin on Pinterest.

Fiction, Mysteries, Romance

Book Review of Morning Comes Softly by Debbie Macomber

December 23, 2015 BGBookworm Leave a comment

I thoroughly enjoyed this romance mystery, Morning Comes Softly –the story of a lonely Louisiana librarian, Mary Warner, who took a risk to find love. While her library pages were putting newspapers away one day, they happened to see a personal ad for a wife placed by a Montana rancher, Travis Thompson, who was caring for his brother’s orphaned children after he and his wife had been killed in a drunk driving accident. The pages encourage Mary to apply, but she rebuffs them. She had given up on the idea of ever finding a husband and at first she rejected the idea. Then she began to realize she did want marriage and children and the thought of the orphaned children of the rancher’s brother and his wife touched her heart.

Travis loves his brother’s three children, but doesn’t know the first thing about parenting and he can’t cook. He realizes he can’t be a real father to the children while running the ranch, and he’s afraid the social workers who check on the children will put them in foster care if he doesn’t satisfy them that someone capable will be looking after them. He has been persuaded by his friends to place the ad, and as a last resort, he does.

Mary takes the risk of answering the ad, and a correspondence develops between Travis and Mary, in which even the children have input. After several letters have gone back and forth, there is finally a phone call, and Mary goes to the ranch to meet them and marry Travis.

The wedding is just the first step to turning five people into a family. I can relate because my husband and I adopted two older children. We also cared for my oldest nephew for the year his parents could not be home with him. It’s never an easy adjustment to build a family from from people who have not all lived with each other before. Love comes softly. Mary learns to love Travis and the children. She is not so sure that all of them love her back. Step-parents have to earn love and trust from their step-children.

Mary’s relationship with Travis is also awkward because neither seems anxious at first to consummate the marriage. Travis really wanted a caretaker for his children more than he wanted a real wife. He is obsessed with finding the drunk driver who is responsible for the death of his brother and sister-in-law, and spends most of his free time doing his own investigation. That is also a major thread in this book. He has promised himself and his brother’s oldest son that he will find and bring that person to justice. Things come to a head when the sheriff closes the investigation.

I had a good idea who the killer was from the time the subplot reached its climax. The author dropped plenty of clues from which the reader can figure it out. The question is whether Travis can forgive. Until he can, it doesn’t appear the marriage will ever become healthy either.

I enjoyed getting to know the characters in this book. I admired Mary’s determination to take a risk and commit herself to making a very unusual marriage work. I genuinely liked her as a person. It was a bit harder to identify with Travis’s hatred for the person responsible for the accident that killed his brother, though I appreciated his willingness to commit himself to taking in his dead brother’s children. It’s hard not to love the children as each responds individually and age-appropriately to the loss of their parents and being thrust into a newly forming family. I even felt a bit sorry for the “villain” and his family, though I won’t spill the beans as to their identities. I don’t want to spoil your own detective work.

If you like romance with a touch of mystery and you enjoy watching families with a rough start overcome their relationship problems, I believe you won’t want to miss Morning Comes Softly by Debbie Macomber.

Read my Reviews of two of the Rose Harbor romances pictured below on Review This!

Fiction, Romance, Teen Fiction

Cancer is the Villain in These Youth Novels

July 29, 2015 BGBookworm Leave a comment

Cancer is the Villain in These Novels for Young Adults

These two books aimed at teens and young adults do not have happy endings, so be warned. The books are very different in tone, but cancer is the villain in both of them.

Raoul (The Angel of Music Book 1): The Plot

Viktor and Christine Homeless in Amarillo

The first book, Raoul (The Angel of Music Book 1) opens with two homeless people, a father, Viktor Daaé, and his eleven-year old daughter, Christine, leaving the Greyhound Station in Amarillo, Texas, as it closes on a snowy night. Someone directs them to a shelter. They receive kind treatment.

Before leaving, Viktor takes the stage in the dining hall with his violin, which he always carries in its case, and Christine sings with a voice developed far above what one would expect for her age. When she sings, it’s said to be with the voice of an angel.

Homeless In California

When they leave the shelter, they head for California, where Viktor hopes to find work with his violin. He hopes to play in a symphony orchestra someday. He had been a musician in Chicago until his wife died of cancer. Their goal had always been to go to Los Angeles to enroll Christine in the Belen Conservatory of Music. They wanted Christine to train to develop her vocal talent. Now Viktor is determined to carry on with that dream.

To earn money for food when they get to Santa Monica, father and daughter play and sing on the Promenade. A policeman says they need a permit to play there and shoos them away. They discover government policies make it hard for the very poor to make a living . The process they go through to get a permit is indicative of this. They slept in the park that night.

Viktor Finds Work and a Place to Live

The next day they go to City Hall to get a permit. Viktor gets a part time job in a local coffee shop, but only because the owner sees Christine. Viktor convinces the owner he will be reliable – that he’s not a drifter. The cafe owner helps Viktor get a room in a transient motel and says he’ll pay the first week and take it out of Viktor’s wages. Christine must stay inside all day and let no one in.

At night they busk on the pier to bring in more cash. Victor had been a professional violinist in Chicago, and Christine is a musical prodigy, so they quickly find an appreciative audience and collect a lot of money in Viktor’s violin case. One whose attention they attract is Zoë, a young woman dressed all in black. Next to her is twelve-year-old Raoul, dressed in a private school uniform.

There are frequent flashbacks in the book. We learn how Viktor met Christine’s mother and what happened to her. We discover how Viktor, originally from Sweden, came to be in America. We also find out how other characters introduced in the book become important in Victor and Christine’s story.

My Review of Raoul (The Angel of Music Book 1)

The book is well written.The author provides enough background to help readers of all ages who are paying attention anticipate what will happen next. The end is sad, but there is still room for hope.

I enjoyed watching the characters interact, especially Raoul and Christine. Zoë is a sort of governess to Raoul and lives with his very wealthy family. All have music connections to the Belen Conservatory of Music. As the book progresses, Raoul and Christine become friends, and we begin to wonder if they will have a future together.

I see one fault in the book from an adult standpoint. Everything falls into place a bit too neatly to be realistic. The characters are vivid and developed enough so that one can predict how they will behave. Although many of the minor characters are no angels, the main characters are all caring people who like to help others.

It’s a heart-warming story, if a bit sentimental in tone, and I enjoyed it. I suppose one could call it a coming-of-age story. It is very sympathetic to the homeless. It will be of special interest to young adult music lovers. The complete trilogy below is a modern retelling of The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. This book is just the first volume.
.

Here is the complete trilogy.

Raoul (The Angel of Music) (Volume 1) Erik (The Angel of Music) (Volume 2) Ghost (The Angel of Music) (Volume 3)

James Patterson and Emily Raymond’s First Love: A Review

At first, I couldn’t believe Patterson was writing a book whose main characters had no qualms about breaking the law. It stars two teens who are in love and afraid to admit it to each other. It begins in Klamath Falls, Oregon.

The Characters

Axi, the girl, is sixteen wants to run away from home. She wants her close friend Robinson, the boy, seventeen, to come with her. She has the itinerary all planned and has decided they will go by bus. Robinson agrees to come. He has other ideas about the transportation, though, and wants to ride in style.

He steals a Harley. This freaks Axi out. She is basically a good kid. In fact, Robinson’s pet name for her is GG – Good Girl. She is the more academically inclined of the two. Her name for him is Scalawag.

Axi’s Family

It is three weeks from the end of the school term. Robinson hasn’t been going to school anyway. He doesn’t seem to have a family — at least he never mentions one. Axi is a good student, but she thinks getting away is important enough to ditch those last three weeks of classes.

We learn that Axi’s mom had left after her other daughter, Axi’s little sister Carole Ann, died of cancer. Axi’s dad was an alcoholic. Before she left on the trip at 4 AM, Axi kissed him goodbye, but she didn’t wake him or leave a note. She wasn’t happy with any of the drafts she had written so she skipped the note altogether.

On the Lam

On their travels the two do many wild and illegal things, stealing other vehicles as they go, and even worse. Axi is often terrified at some of the things Robinson does, but she goes along with them. She follows Robinson’s directions, hoping they won’t land in jail. They never did suffer the kind of consequences you might expect for their behavior, but readers won’t really care.

You are far into the book and past the crazy stuff when the real truth of how and where Robinson and Axi met comes out and Axi has to deal with a crisis. I won’t spoil it for you.

My Opinion of First Love

First Love

Readers will enjoy watching Axi and Robinson banter back and forth and tease each other, and they will sympathize with how vulnerable the two feel when it comes to expressing their hidden feelings. The book’s beginning is so humorous that readers are caught off-guard when the first hints of how the book will end come out.

This book is outrageous, unrealistic, and funny at the beginning. The humor continues until almost the end. The characters are engaging and even if you don’t approve of all they do, you will still love them. You will want to grab some tissues as you near the end as you finally come face to face with what is real life for too many of today’s youth.

Grief and Loss, Marriage and Family, Memoirs, Nonfiction

Review of Resilience by Elizabeth Edwards

July 5, 2015 BGBookworm Leave a comment

Elizabeth Edwards died about five years ago of breast cancer. She had announced the diagnosis in 2004 after the election in which her husband, John Edwards, lost his bid to become Vice President of the United States. Eight years earlier, in 1996, the Edwards had lost their 16-year-old son, Wade, when the car he was driving was pushed off the road by the wind and he lost control of it. At the end of 2006. Elizabeth learned of what she called John’s “indiscretion” with another woman, and at the beginning of 2010 the two separated after John publicly admitting fathering a child with another woman.

Elizabeth’s first book, Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength from Friends and Strangers, which I have not yet read, was published in September, 2006. Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities, followed in May, 2009, a year and a half before her death. In this book, Elizabeth Edwards shares her journey of bereavement, fighting her cancer, and dealing with her husband’s betrayal. She also reveals how hard it was to have planned one kind of life and to face the fact that the life she had planned was going to be much different than she had been prepared for.

Mary Elizabeth Anania Edwards grew up in a military family. Her father was a Navy pilot, and she spent part of her childhood in Japan. That was when she first learned a bit about resilience from her tutor, Toshiko. Toshiko had been a beautiful woman. She had trained for a decade in one of the top courses in Japan to become a geisha , and her future had looked very bright. When she finished her course, she went home to visit her parents in Hiroshima in August, 1945. Unfortunately for her, that was when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on that city.

Toshiko was knocked to the ground and badly injured. Her skin was charred and her hair was burned. After months of treatment, she was able to resume what for some might have been a normal life, but it was not the life she had trained and planned for, since she had lost her beauty — an essential for her planned career. Elizabeth shares Toshiko’s story and what she learned from her.

A large part of the book deals with Elizabeth’s internal processing of Wade’s death and her own grief work. I lost my Jason when he was fourteen, two years younger than Wade, also in an accident. I can identify with much that Elizabeth shares here. I believe most bereaved moms will recognize her feelings as some part of their own. She got more support than many of us had, since she was a public figure who got thousands of letters from the public. She also got support from internet support groups, which did not exist yet when I lost Jason. My support came from my family, church and other home school families.

Bereaved mothers will find much here that may help them keep going as Elizabeth shares her own experience of trying to put the pieces of her life back together. She shares her struggle to understand why her son, who was a good person, who did nothing to contribute to his accident happening, who had a bright future ahead, would die when he did. Why did God allow it?

Knowing what I do about grief, I personally believe that losing Wade may be a contributing factor in the other trials that follow. A major emotional stress, and the death of a child is one of the greatest a parent can face, can make the body more susceptible to disease. Although no scientific research proves a link between stress and breast cancer, Elizabeth mentions a common result of bereavement — not eating normally and not being able to sleep. A poor diet and sleep deprivation can lower resistance to disease.

Here is more information on dealing with the death of a child. This article states that the death of a child can take a toll on one’s health. Research of long-term effects on bereaved parents indicates the death of a child from unnatural causes such as accidents can be associated with mortality of the mother: “Bereavement was associated with long-term mortality due to illness (e.g., cancer) for the mothers, presumably because of stress, a weakened immune system, or poor health behaviors.”

This same study indicates that divorce rates among bereaved parents are eight times that of the norm. As far as we know, John’s infidelity did not begin until after his wife was diagnosed with cancer, eight years after Wade’s death. No one really ever gets over the death of a child — the thoughts of it just become less frequent over time. Perhaps the double blow of losing his son and the possibility of losing his wife, added to the side-effects of her treatments and the frequent separations when he had to travel, were all contributing factors to the infidelity.

Be that as it may, whatever the causes, Elizabeth has to deal with it all. She shares from her heart how each challenge impacted her, what she felt, and what she did. She relates the help she got from others and how what she’d learned from her family had helped her face her own situations. She shares her doubts and her attempts to understand her faith in light of Wade’s death. Since the Plan A she had for her life had been blown apart, she tries to construct a Plan B.

In conclusion, Elizabeth makes it clear that each of us must find our own path through pain and grief. We won’t all be on the same grief timetable. We aren’t competing with each other in the immensity of our grief nor in how well we handle it or how long it lasts. Most people will not have to deal with all three of Elizabeth’s sorrows at the same time, as she did. We will deal with whatever sorrows and challenges life throws at us. They won’t seem less just because someone else may have had more.

This book will not take your own pain away, if you are facing similar circumstances. It will not provide a plan to fix your life. That you will still need to work through yourself. It will give you some company as you work through grief and loss. It will encourage you to know that it is possible to find your own resilience.

By Elizabeth Edwards: Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength from Friends and Strangers

John Edwards Fast Facts

Christian Fiction, Fiction

A Brief Look at HOW SWEET THE SOUND by Amy Sorrells

January 7, 2015 BGBookworm 3 Comments

When I began HOW SWEET THE SOUND I didn’t realize what I was in for. I guess I expected a typical formula-written inspirational Christian novel that would not challenge me much. I got quite a surprise.

This was not a book to let me escape, but a book to make me think about the subjects many people live through and few want to bring into the open and talk about. These subjects include bereavement, grief, rape, incest, suicide, sibling rivalry, and child abuse – most of it in one family. Unfortunately, this book is realistic enough to make it believable, and, therefore, depressing. Most of the book is depressing, but it’s so well-written that you are willing to see it to the finish. Fortunately, by the end things are looking up.

The author really knows how to use the English language. No cliches here. We see the characters through the eyes of thirteen-year-old Anniston, and her aunt, Comfort. Anniston begins the narrative on Thanksgiving Day in southern Alabama shortly after Hurricane Frederic has ravaged the coast and destroyed half the Vaughn family’s pecan orchard. At first she describes what appears to be a typical extended family gathering, but before dinner is over you will see how dysfunctional the Harlan family is. Before the night is over, two brothers, Anniston’s father, Rey, and uncle, Cole, will be dead, and their sister Comfort will be dying inside.

The book is hard to follow in the beginning. The family tree diagram on the first page is a must if you want to keep straight how the characters are related. The first chapters are like beginning to work a jigsaw puzzle. They contain pieces of plot that you will need to place in your mind. It’s better to get the edges (the family tree) in place first, so you can more easily figure out where the other pieces go.

This is not a book one reads to just enjoy and savor. It’s a book that will introduce you to ways of life that may seem foreign if you were raised in a loving and a supportive family. The plot is based on the story of Tamar in the Bible, a daughter of King David, who was raped by her brother Amnon. You can read the story in 2 Samuel 13. Even royal households can be dysfunctional. Sin and lust lurk everywhere. The sins of the fathers often are passed to their sons until the cycle is broken. Yet the book will offer hope to those who have suffered bereavement, grief, rape, and incest. It will also show parents how important it is not to favor one child over the others, and everyone what sharp weapons their tongues can be.

The dead cannot be brought back, but the living can become new. Comfort’s path to healing was not an easy one, as you will see in the short poems she writes. But her Abba does not leave her alone. His voice comes to her during her darkest moments. Her family and Solly, the man she had been planning to marry, continue to reach out to her. It is only when she had lost all hope that she was willing to accept help. Abba (and her family and Solly) pull her from the prison into which she had retreated and healing begins.

Even though this may be a hard read, I recommend it. I almost stopped reading after the first few chapters, but I’m glad I didn’t. The characters reached into my heart and I wanted them to find peace and recognize the love that did surround them. No family or person is without sin. The author reveals the destructive patterns that can lead families and individuals to despair, but also show us the way to Abba’s love and healing. You can purchase How Sweet the Sound Here

Fiction, Romance

Review of Come Find Me by Travis Neighbor Ward

July 11, 2014 BGBookworm Leave a comment

Sixteen-year-old Jessica Wilson meets Mark Fripp while they are both living at Fort Benning. They are both Army children. They fall in love as much as teens are able to fall in love, but after only six weeks, Mark has to leave when his father is transferred to Italy. Jessica and Mark email each other for a time, but then the emails from Mark stop coming and Jessica believes he no longer loves her. He actually does try to email her, but she’s not getting them, and can’t answer him. Her heart is broken.

Both their fathers die in the Battle of Kirkuk in 2003 in Iraq while serving in the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, but neither knows the other’s father had died. Both are separately dealing with the grief of missing each other and losing their fathers in the same year. Both had been using military emails to communicate and the accounts were taken away when their fathers died. That is part of what happened to their communication.

We learn this story as Jessica tells it to her troubled sixteen-year-old daughter Chelsea after she has run away from home during a period of depression after a break-up with her boyfriend. She was found and returned, but Jessica was afraid she might leave again. She seemed to have turned into a different girl, one who had dropped out of her extracurricular activities and taken up bad habits. Once Chelsea was back home, Jessica had tried everything she knew to help her, including therapy, church, and horseback riding lessons, but none of it seemed to help. Jessica is afraid of losing Chelsea every time she leaves home alone. It appears Chelsea believes Jessica cannot understand the pain she feels after the break-up.

Jessica decides to force Chelsea to take a three-hour drive back to Fort Benning where she, Jesssica, had fallen in love. It is isolated enough there so that she may get the chance to tell Chelsea her own story of heartbreak without having her jump out of the car and run away.

When the story opens, it is 2013. Jessica is living with her widowed sister Jill whose husband has died in an IED explosion in Afghanistan, leaving her with three children at home. They live a block from Jessica’s mother Clara and her second husband Paul. Jessica helps Jill with the children and their activities and works seasonally at an animal rescue center. Jessica is engaged to a wealthy rancher, Blake McCormick, even though what she feels for him is a much different kind of love than that she had felt for Mark.

Mark had also had a miserable ten years of grief. He was living in Arizona in Navajo Nation after being discharged from the Air Forces’s 55th Rescue Squadron two years earlier. He had been disqualified for further service after an accident in Afghnistan that left him colorblind after his other injuries had healed. He missed the Air Force, and felt like damaged goods because of the discharge. For two years he had been chasing opportunities for new thrills in risky activities.

Now he wanted to go to Capetown, South Africa to to jump from the Blouskrans Bridge, the highest one on earth at 708 feet. But first he had one more thing to do. He had found out where Jessica was living and he wanted to go and see her. He had never gotten over losing her and hoped they could yet pick up the pieces of their relationship. He hopped on his Honda VFR Interceptor with a ticket to Capetown in his pocket, and headed for Atlanta to find Jessica. As Jessica told Chelsea at the beginning of her story, ‘I was engaged…and then my past came walking in the back door.’

To see what happened you need to read Come Find Me. I hope you will. The characters are memorable and show you who they are. There are very few of them I would not want at my dinner table, and I believe you will enjoy meeting them and watching them work out what they want most in life.

Bookworm Buffet

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