BOOK REVIEW: The Bride Quartet

Last week the weather and a bug put me on the couch for several days. The only thing I could do was lie there and read. I had been waiting for all four of Nora Roberts’ Bride Quartet to be published  -- and for time to read the four books together. This was my time.

Four little girls, Parker, Emma, Laurel, and Mac, loved to play Wedding Day. They took turns being the bride, the groom, the best man, the maid of honor, the clergy, etc. If needed, they married the kittens, puppies, and big brothers. Sometimes the latter were part of the game under protest.

Years later, Parker formed a company called Vows that brought each of her friends’ unique talent to the business. Each friend’s story is highlighted in one of the four books.

When the girls were still very young, Mackenzie had been given a camera as a birthday gift. She discovered that she takes great pleasure in capturing the right moment. Laurel can turn out the most fantastic cakes, Emma has a way with flowers, and of course, Parker is almost anal when it comes to details. Vows quickly becomes The Place to hold weddings in that part of Connecticut.

The special thing about a series is that the characters become familiar and we are given four books to get to know these women and their families. Roberts has always been excellent at developing people, especially her male protagonists. Each person in these books comes alive.

What I liked best about this series was the portrayal of friendship. The girls had grown up together and over the years their relationship had helped each of them to overcome personal problems and to become stronger women. The books are worth reading for this angle alone.

VISION IN WHITE, BED OF ROSES, SAVOR THE MOMENT, and HAPPY EVER AFTER take us back to Nora Roberts, the Romance writer. In recent years she has become as well known for her futuristic mysteries and her supernatural novels. The Bride Quartet shows us how this bestselling author got started.

BOOK REVIEW: The Redemption of Micah

THE REDEMPTION OF MICAH by Beth Williamson may be an excellent example of how a book with good possibilities can go wrong.

In 1875, in Plum Creek, Colorado, Micah has been keeping watch by Eppie’s bed. Eppie has been in a coma for three years from a gun shot wound. Micah has been talking to her, reading to her, and several months into the coma, has helped to deliver their baby girl, Miracle.

Waking up, Eppie is confused by the strangers around her and with no idea of who she is. She can not feel anything for this little girl that she had never met, and she can not trust this man, Micah, who says that they had been deeply in love before the accident.

Several situations show that the feelings from the recent war still run deep and as outsiders start visiting, we learn that Eppie had been born to a freed slave. Because of Miracle’s mixed blood, some of the good people in town decide that the little girl should be in a more stable home.  She is kidnapped and placed with a family who had lost their children.

THE REDEMPTION OF MICAH has a good story line. The people are easy to like -- or dislike, and some of the touches involving race, motherhood, and enemies from a past war are subtle, but they make the author’s point.

The actual dialogue was well done, keeping fairly well to the time and place. Eppie surprised everyone after the coma by speaking like Micah, a cultured, educated Southerner. I was able to go along with that, after all, he had been reading and talking to her for three years while she was unconscious. It was the only voice she heard.

My problem was that too many times the author felt obligated to use modern, vulgar language for some of the love scenes. That such usage was disturbing may sound petty, especially from a reader who has certainly read those words before,  but it bothers me on two levels. First, I want authors to be consistent with their characters, and secondly, I will be glad when authors stop insulting us by thinking that vulgarities will sell books.

It was a shame that the language jolted the reader out of the mood and setting that the author was trying to creating. So many other things were right with this book.

BOOK REVEIW: Discovering the Parables; An Inspirational Guide for Everyday Life

Fairy tales, fables, allegories, oral folk tales, and parables have been with us probably for as long as man has been able to speak. This was the way man passed stories and lessons on to other men before the birth of the printing press and computers.

Parables were the stories that Jesus told to help his early followers better understand the lessons that He had to teach. To help those of us today to have a better understanding of these stories, Henry G. Covert has written DISCOVERING THE PARABLE; AN INSPIRATIONAL GUIDE FOR EVERYDAY LIFE.

Jesus was a master storyteller. If some of His contempory listeners had trouble understanding all of his message, the same can be said for most of his modern “listeners”. We, today, have the disadvantage of not living at the time the stories were told. The references to seeds, fig trees, and vineyards are not in our experiences.

Reverend Covert takes time to give us the background of each of the parables and why it would have made sense to the people at that time.  Reverend Covert then goes into more detail about the message contained in each parable.

Even the parables I thought I knew and understood were given a deeper meaning. The parable of the mustard seed is one that most of us know. To me, it has always been a story to show that even a small amount of faith will grow. Reverend Covert takes it a step beyond the simple and the obvious. I loved his using the seed growing in Mary as something else to think about in reference to the growth of the mustard seed.

Each parable takes on its own importance in this book. The book is written in an easy style that flows well. Each chapter ends with a section with reflection questions and thoughts.

Henry Covert is an ordained minister with the United Church of Christ. He has served in the military, as a police sergeant and as a county detective in a district attorney’s office. He served as a state prison chaplain and as an adjunct faculty member at Penn State University. He is the author of four books.  His fifth book, The Crucifixion of Jesus, to be released this year.

From reading his books, the fact that he had been the chaplain for Pennsylvania’s first execution in thirty-three years made a lasting impression on him.

No matter what your faith, DISCOVERING THE PARABLES would be a good study guide. Whether you are Christian or not, the life lessons in the parables are worth reading.  Reverend Covert will certainly help you to walk through them.

BOOK REVIEW: A Soft Place To Land

The relationship between sisters can be complicated. What can draw them close can sometimes be the same thing that tears them apart. Susan Rebecca White explores these conflicts between two sisters, Ruthie and Julia, in A SOFT PLACE TO LAND.

Ruthie was in seventh grade and Julia was a sophomore in high school when their parents were killed in a plane crash. The girls’ parents expected to live forever or at least until the girls were grown. As a result, following their parents’ death, the girls are separated. Ruthie goes to live across the country in San Francisco with her father’s sister and her husband. Julia goes to live with her natural father who does not know her and a stepmother who does not want her.

In San Francisco Ruthie is raised by an aunt and uncle who accept and love her. She has the opportunities to meet people and to try foods and adventures that were not possible back in Atlanta. When it is time for college, she fits in with the campus crowd at Berkeley.

Things are almost the complete opposite for Julia. Her stepmother is very strict and not prepared to have her husband’s daughter to another woman in the house. Julia’s grief causes so much resentment and anger that she ends up in a rehabilitation facility run by her stepmother’s fundamentalist church.

The devotion and loyalty between the two sisters is challenged again and again. Julia can not help but be jealous of Ruthie’s lifestyle and an incident during her visit to Berkeley causes Ruthie to feel betrayed.

The author, Susan Rebecca White, seems to understand the dynamics of family life, whether it is stepparents or an aunt and uncle who are able to raise a child on love alone. She is able to break through the stereotypes that you would expect and she gives us flawed humans that we can care about.

White uses three different plane accidents to help us keep track of time and to move the story along. The first, of course, is the plane accident that killed the girls’ parents, but the Twin Tower incident and the crashing of US Airways Flight 1549 into the Hudson River also play a part. This adds much to the “ real feel” of the story.

I enjoyed this book. It is a story that women who have a sister will be able to relate to and women who never had one wish that they did.