Together Forever by Jody Hedlund

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Together Forever

This is the second in the Orphan Train series and chronicles the journey of the second Neumann sister as she worked as an agent for the Children's Aid Society in sending children out to Illinois to be placed for adoption. Jody's intent was to try and give an agent's perspective as they travelled with the children, their love for the children and then their need to let them go to their new parents. She also tried to give some perspective from the children's viewpoint as well. I'm sure the whole orphan train had so many pros and cons: there were some good families who took in the children and there were some not so good families. Then there were those children who nobody wanted that felt once more the crush of rejection. Anyway, that's a different story.

That story line was good. Of course, there was the romance in the story as well: two single placing out agents, one male and one female and you know the rest of the story with the unexpected twists and turns.  There were a few really key things to me in this story though. Both of the main characters were holding on to past mistakes and wounds and refusing to forgive themselves. Here are a few quotes from the book that I think are really good. "But don't you think sometimes it takes even greater courage to accept our losses? And not just accept them, but move on and continue to live?....I lost Sophie and Olivia and Nicholas. I can hate and blame myself forever. That's actually the easy thing to do. What takes strength is to finally forgive myself and make peace with what happened."  I just thought that was good. I can hold on to mistakes I've made and blame myself or I can choose to forgive myself and let God's forgiveness cover me and move forward and live a full life again.

Again on courage from earlier in the book. "He said it takes great courage to accept what I can't change, and even more courage to move forward and live my life to the fullest in spite of how achingly hard it is to face each new day....What I've learned is that courage takes many forms..."  I really liked those thoughts on courage as well.

I did enjoy the story, even though I would say it was fairly predictable, but like I mentioned there were some real gems to be mined in the midst of the story.

I received this book from Bethany House and was not required to write a positive review.

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