Reviewed December 17, 2006.
Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton,
Illinois,
2002. 369 pages.
A big thank
you to my Mom for
sending me this series of books.
Gary Smalley
admits that this
book was written to “illustrate what I believe God teaches about
marriage.” He says, “I’ve written many
books about how to restore broken relationships. But
nothing touches the heart, nothing
fleshes out the truth quite like a good story.”
The series
will feature the
Baxter family and their five adult children. In
this book, Kari learns that her professor husband is
having an affair
with a student. He wants a divorce.
Kari is, of
course,
devastated. The description of the sick
feeling in her stomach when she learned the truth really makes the
reader feel
her pain. But she decides that she made
a commitment to her husband, and she refuses to give him a divorce. Even though her former boyfriend comes back
in town, and everyone seems to think she should “move on.”
Karen
Kingsbury does a
wonderful job of telling a beautiful, compelling story from this
material, but
there is a slight taste of a sermon about it. And
when the couple attends a marriage workshop like those
offered by
the Smalley
Relationship Center,
it feels like a commercial.
However, it
was wonderfully
refreshing reading a novel where someone decides to stand for their
marriage,
and not just give a divorce as soon as her husband asks for one. A nice change
from what so many books and movies tell us or
assume. They didn’t touch the fact that,
in most
states, he can get a divorce anyway. I
have discovered that under Illinois
law, if my husband waits until we have been separated for two years, he
can
easily get a divorce for “irreconcilable differences.”
It’s going to be a long haul to persevere for
all that time without signing papers to hurry things along, but I do
believe it’s
the right thing to do. And it was
wonderful
to read a rare story about someone who did the same thing.
Though I was
a bit annoyed by
how easily things worked out for her. She
thought a few months of her husband away was a long
time! I’ve heard many stories of
reconciled
marriages, and many, many “prodigal spouses” do return, but it is much
more
common for it to take far longer than a few months, especially if they
are
already having an affair, as hers was. Of
course, in
the end, she gets a much too easy solution. But
maybe I feel that way because I so related to her
predicament of her
husband wanting a divorce—so I didn’t want things to work out so much
better
for her so much more quickly than they’re working out for me! In short, I guess I was a bit jealous. It was a little bit too close to my situation,
but her story was much easier than what I’ve see in real life.
However, this
is a moving
story, told well. It’s very tricky to
tell a story that has a message, but on the other hand it can be
refreshing if
it’s a good message. And I have to admit
that reading it made me feel much less strange to want to keep my
marriage, as
well as much less alone.
Copyright © 2006 Sondra Eklund. All
rights reserved.
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Book Reviews by Sondra Eklund
