Where I share my love of books with reviews, features, giveaways and memes. Family and needlepoint are thrown in from time to time.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

ARC Arrival: White Picket Fences by Susan Meissner


White Picket Fences by Susan Meissner

Publisher: Waterbrook Press

I received this book for review from Waterbrook Press (Random House).

The Janviers have the idyllic life--a beautiful home, great jobs, two wonderful kids--and surrounding it all is the proverbial white picket fence that protects them, offers them a serene sense of security. . .and hides all their secrets.

When her black sheep brother disappears, Amanda Janvier eagerly takes in her sixteen-year-old niece Tally. The girl is practically an orphan: motherless and living with a father who raises Tally wherever he lands--in a Buick, a pizza joint, a horse farm--and regularly takes off on wild schemes. Amanda envisions that she, her husband, Neil, and their two teenagers can offer the girl stability and a shot at a "normal" life, even though their own storybook lives are about to crumble.

Seventeen-year-old Chase Janvier hasn't seen his cousin in years, and other than a vague curiosity about her strange life, he doesn't expect her arrival will affect him much--or interfere with his growing, disturbing interest in a long-ago house fire that plagues his dreams.

Tally and Chase bond as they interview two Holocaust survivors for a sociology project, and become startlingly aware that the whole family is grappling with hidden secrets, with the echoes of the past, and with the realization that ignoring tragic situations won't make them go away.

Will Tally's presence blow apart their carefully constructed world, revealing a hidden past that could destroy them all--or can she help them find the truth without losing each other? From the author of The Shape of Mercy, one of Publishers Weekly's Best Religious Fiction Books of 2008, comes a tale of family secrets smoldering behind a white picket fence. (back cover)

Susan Meissner cannot remember a time when she wasn't driven to put her thoughts down on paper. Her novels include The Shape of Mercy, winner of the Christian Book Award for Fiction, and Blue Heart Blessed. Susan and her husband, a pastor and a chaplain in the Air Force Reserves, make their home in Southern California. They are the parents of four grown children. (back cover)

White Picket Fences
Publisher/Publication Date: Waterbrook Press, Oct 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4000-7457-0
368 pages

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