Evergreen

Evergreen by Susan May Warren was given to me by Tyndale House for the purpose of reading and writing a review about it.

Yes, I have found another publisher who offers free books in exchange for my opinion about the books.  I cannot pass up a good deal like that.  Evergreen was a short novella based on the Christiansen family in upper Minnesota.  The timing of this book was perfect because I have read the previous book in her series and this one seemed to play into the right timeline.  I like the Christiansen family--they seem down to earth, practical, and overall a fun, normal family with normal family struggles.  In this book, the two brothers are estranged because of a fight they had.  Because I read the other books, I know what the fight was about, but the book didn't elaborate at all on it.

This book was about the parents, John and Ingrid and their dimming relationship. The root cause stemmed back to a miscarriage or stillborn, I wasn't sure which.  The overwhelming sense of responsibility and the fear of losing his wife had overwhelmed John and he had taken matters into his own hands and made sure there would be no more children.  This distressed Ingrid and she allowed bitterness to harbor in her heart for years.  This was very sad to me--I know how much havoc grief and death can wreak on a family and it was disheartening that she had allowed it to fester and yet, I know how easy it could happen.  Husband and wife grieve in very different ways and one of the ways John grieved, in my opinion, was by taking care to make sure the same thing never happened again.  Very much like a man to fix the problem and very much like a woman to feel like she should have been consulted and allowed an opinion.  Both had valid arguments.  Mistakes were made on both sides and in the end, as happens in all good fiction books, peace and harmony was restored and they fell back in love again.

I really do like Susan May Warren's books and will continue to look forward to reading them.  I have started to really try and dig out things that I can learn and apply to my own life from the fiction books that I read.  That is why I really emphasized the grief aspect in this book because that speaks to me right now.  I know how differently a man and a woman grieve and if you don't talk about it, it can quickly drive a wedge between you because you don't understand or think that your spouse even cares about what you are going through, so my plug to everyone who reads this review is to talk it out with your spouse.  Don't let it fester for many years as it did for John and Ingrid until it finally comes to a head.  Get it out in the open and talk about it and then you won't have to go through the winter of your relationship like John's had to.