Parenting

Don’t Believe a Word, by Patricia McDonald

November 18, 2018 by Site Author Leave a Comment

Characters:
Eden Radley, an editor for a publishing house in New York City, whose Mother Tara, has committed suicide after murdering her son, Eden’s half-brother Jeremy, who has an incurable disease.
Flynn Darby, the father of Jeremy and husband of Tara, and an author
Hugh Radley, Eden’s father

Eden Radley does not have a good relationship with her mother, Tara. Eden has never forgiven Tara for abandoning her and her father and marrying her ‘soulmate’, Flynn Darby when Eden is still a young girl. After her new marriage Tara has a child, a buy named Jeremy who sadly is afflicted with a fatal disease. The family moves to Cleveland so that Jeremy can receive treatment from a renowned doctor there. But Eden receives the news that her mother has killed her son and taken her own life at the family’s home, while the father was out of town. Eden takes time off from her job as an editor at a publishing house in New York City and goes to Cleveland for the funeral. What she finds there is anything but a clear case of murder/suicide.
This book kept me guessing the whole time. Was it the father/husband or even Eden’s father? Was it a jealous lover? While the plot did some stretching of what I would think was entirely possible, if you’re willing to go along with that, it was very intriguing. Lots of suspects in a story about a girl who wants to find the truth and also come to terms with her sad relationship with her mother. Finding out what happened becomes a way for Eden to make up for her coldness towards Tara and the brother she refused to acknowledge while he was alive.

Desperate Measures, by Jo Bannister

November 18, 2018 by Site Author Leave a Comment

Published 2015

Characters Gabriel Ash, the father, intelligence officer
Cathy Ash, his wife, who’s been kidnapped and held captive with their two sons, Guy and Gilbert for four years in Somalia

Hazel Best, the constable on leave who befriends Gabriel after his wife and children’s abduction

At the beginning of this tale, Gabriel Ash is meeting with his psychiatrist, Laura Fry in the presence of Hazel Best, a friend and police officer, after just discovering that his wife, whom he believed to have been kidnapped and murdered by Somali pirates, is alive. He has just talked to her via computer and is convinced that she is alive and well. It turns out that his two sons are also alive, but what he has to do to get them back safely to England is ghastly. He has been instructed by the pirates that he must kill himself live on the internet before they can be sent home. The two women advise him to call the police but he refuses to do so, saying that leaving the police out of it is part of the deal. However, Hazel is still a member of the police force, although persona-non-grata at the moment, so some collaboration is done. There is another female present at the meeting in the form of Gabriel’s dog, a lurcher named Patience. Lurchers are apparently a cross-breed dog found in Britain between a sight hound, usually a greyhound, and some type of terrier or collie. Patience is taken in by Hazel after Gabriel carries out the demands of the kidnappers but she isn’t your average dog. As Hazel puts it, Patience can say more with the angle of her nose than can be expressed in an essay. But the plot in this story has lots of twists and turns as Hazel is determined to find the pirates responsible for her friend’s death even after his wife and boys are safely home in Norbold. Gabriel’s wife won’t have a dog in her house so Hazel keeps her even though it means she will have to move out of her rented flat and into a small house. Now that she has the extra room, Hazel also takes in a young homeless man called Saturday, a nickname given to him while in care by the other kids, because being Jewish, he was ‘excused on Saturdays’. As Saturday tries to clean up his act Hazel keeps puzzling out the threads of what actually happened to Cathy Ash and the two boys and why her story doesn’t quite add up.
An interesting and readable book and even thought the plot takes some fairly wild turns I found it completely believable due to the skill of the writer’s story telling.

Faith Bass Darling’s Last Garage Sale, by Lynda Rutledge

January 31, 2018 by Site Author Leave a Comment

Published 2012

Characters: Faith Bass Darling, matriarch of Bass, Texas
Claudia Jean Darling, her daughter
Bobbie Ann Blankenship, Claudia’s childhood friend who is now an antique dealer
John Jasper Johnson, the black deputy, Mike Darling’s best friend and fellow football superstar
Claude Angus Darling, Faith’s deceased husband
Mike Darling, Faith’s son who was killed in an accident as a teenager.

‘On the last day of the millennium, after a midnight revelation from God, Faith Bass Darling had a garage sale.’
But not just any yard sale. Hauled out onto the lawn of her mansion were priceless antiques, a Tiffany lamp collection, an heirloom ring and a 10,000 bill. Faith Bass Darling is in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Her daughter Claudia Jean has not spoken to her mother in over a decade. So when Faith decides to sell all of her possessions on the day before January 1 in the year 2000, there is no one to stand in her way. Bobbie Jean, as owner of the local antique store, hurries over to the sale and tries to keep Faith from letting her beautiful things go for almost nothing, a few dollars for each item, or twenty dollars for an antique worth thousands. The local deputy, John Jasper also tries to dissuade Faith. But Faith is having trouble remembering who she is, let alone who anyone else is. Memories mix in with reality in her brain and she can’t tell which is which. Bobbie does get in touch with Claudia Jean and tells her she must come home, which she does, for the first time since she ran away as a teenager, after the death of her older brother Mike.
This is a story about a broken family, the Darlings, whose ancestors founded the small town in Texas. Faith’s father owned the town bank which she inherited after his death, along with her husband, Claude Angus, whose true colors began to show after her father is gone. The accidental death of Mike, everyone’s ‘darling’ tears the family apart, a tragedy which affects each member in its own way. Claudia’s homecoming means having to face her anger and sense of betrayal by her mother, and maybe a chance to mend the relationship. But with Faith’s mental state slipping into and out of the here and now, it’s hard to get through to her or even know what she is saying.

I will comment here on how unnerving I found it that Faith Bass Darling would set all of her beautiful belongings out on the front lawn and almost give them away to perfect strangers. Every time the story told of another yard sale minivan hauling off a priceless antique it almost turned my stomach. I have a few antiques myself, though nothing on the order of what Faith is almost giving away, and the thought that she no longer cared for these objects to the point that she sold them to people who had no idea of their value, who very well could have used them as trinkets struck me as wrong. But maybe that’s just me.
This is much more than a tale about an older lady struggling with Alzheimer’s selling off her belongings. Friendship, lost love, broken dreams as well as new ones, and what really matters in a family are all here.