Just Jennifer

The Truth About Love and Lightning by Susan McBride (William Morrow, February 2013)

Gretchen Brink’s mother was honest to a fault when Gretchen was growing up.  Gretchen, who saw the results of such honesty first hand has told a few lies in her life to save the feelings of others, but there was one lie in particular that she has kept telling for almost forty years that is about to come back and make her confront it head on.  Gretchen, who was a single mother, is living in the house that belonged to the family of her daughter Abby’s father, Sam, with her twin sisters who are blind.  Sam never met Abby, going on a missionary trip to Africa just after Gretchen learned she was pregnant and never returning.  Now, after a devastating tornado, a man with amnesia falls back into Gretchen’s life, a man she is sure is her long-lost Sam.  At the same time, Abby shows up on Gretchen’s doorstep, running away from her boyfriend Nate in Chicago, announcing that she is pregnant.  As Gretchen and Abby get to know each other again, and as Gretchen tries to help the strange man discover who he is, without projecting too much Sam on to him just in case, secrets from the past begin to emerge, secrets that have roots before Gretchen and Sam, secrets that will either bind the three together or tear them apart forever.  With an eye toward detail, Susan McBride writes a story that you won’t want to end with characters you won’t want to leave.  It is a story about family, loving them and forgiving them, and ourselves, loving ourselves and forgiving ourselves, how we live with the truth and how we live with the lies we tell, and where reality is found between the two.