40 & 41

Book 40 was a teeny little collection of short stories my mum got me for Christmas. The collection is a set of two (does that qualify as a collection?) previously unpublished Christmas stories by Louisa May Alcott (author of Little Women and one of my favorite authors when I was a little girl). The stories are very much in the same vein as the Little Women books and made me want to quickly read through those stories again.

But then I picked up Month of Summer by Lisa Wingate when we stopped at Nuggets on Saturday. I don't even know how to describe what this book was about...Love? Forgiveness? maybe grace? The story is alternately told through the point of view of Rebecca and Hanna Beth. Thirty five years ago Rebecca's father left her and her mother for Hanna Beth. since the day she and her mother left their home to move to California, Rebecca has not had any contact with her father.

Then Hanna Beth has a stroke and Rebecca's father (who suffers from Alzheimers and dementia) and step brother (who is mentally challenged) are left to fend for themselves. Rebecca gets a phone call from the police letting her know that if she doesn't fly home to Dallas the social services will take over.

And the story progresses from there.

I found myself relating to this story a lot more than I wanted to. Here's a quote from early on that I thought really captured what it's like to be the adult child of a broken marriage (to set it up, Rebecca thought she had put her dad and new family out of her mind. She'd spent her entire life trying to forget him and the pain of losing him. Now she's in Dallas and about to meet her dad and step brother again:)

"Unfortunately, the pain had travelled with me across the country, across the years, and as I stood outside her door, it was as fresh and as much a part of me as it had been that twelfth summer. It stabbed as sharply now as then - like a chronic injury, reawakend by a careless movement, a sudden strain caused by the burden of picking up something too heavy. It's intesity surprised me. I'd expected, in this adult body, safely entrenched in a life that was completely separate from that of Hanna Beth and my father, to be able to maintain a comfortable detachment, a reasonable objectivity. Instead, I wanted to lock myself away someplace quiet, and nurse the raw spot until it stopped burning."

And then talking about what it would be like for her daughter if her own marriage were to break up, "Would her confident smile, her openness, her self-worth slowly diminish until she found trust a struggle, faith a chore? Would she always feel vaguely inadequate, unworthy, as if she had to prove something to be more than she was, because no one could love her for just herself?"

Well, anyway, I guess my point is that it seems Wingate is particularly good at characterization and at capturing human emotion. Good read.