All She Left Behind by Jane Kirkpatrick

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Product Details

This story is set in the late 1800's and is based on a true story. Jennie is a young woman married to an alcoholic. He divorces her and she goes to work as a caregiver/nurse for an older lady in failing health. In a bizarre turn of events, after the lady dies, her husband, a 64 year old man and Jennie, a 26-year old, fall in love and get married. She goes on to become a doctor and to say much more would be to give away some of the story line.  From what I was able to gather in the author's notes is that this is all true.

Knowing that this book was based on a true story does help the story line a bit, but I will have to say the book had a hard time pulling me in. There really seemed to be no plot, nothing that just grabbed my attention. The references to God were somewhat minimal, it didn't seem like a real relationship with God. There was a piece about guilt, where Jennie's friend would have said, you need to confess your failings to God, then forgive yourself, and rather than drowning in guilt over some supposed wrong, to pick up and move on and make something of yourself. Those are my own words, but I thought that was good. Sometimes, I think, we know, in our brain, that God forgives us, and yet we struggle to forgive ourselves thinking we aren't worthy of forgiveness.

So my final conclusion is that this is not my style of book at all. I'd like to think you could write a down-to-earth, true-to-life story and have it pull the reader in, this book did not do that for me at all. I can't really tell you what it was missing, but I was somewhat disappointed overall.

I received this book from Revell Books. I was not required to write a positive review.

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