Cynthia writes stories of hope that glows in the dark, merging her love for storytelling with inextinguishable hope for inexpressible hurts.
Cynthia spends her days diving into words, worship, and wonder and celebrating 40 years of marriage, three grown children, and five outrageously adorable grandchildren. One of her greatest joys is helping other writers grow in their craft. To that end, she served as the assistant director and a faculty member of the Quad Cities Christian Writers Conference, has served as worship and devotions staff for the Write-to-Publish conference, and teaches at other conferences as opportunities arise. She speaks to women’s groups, at mother-daughter banquets, and for women’s refresher days and retreats. It is her delight to serve on her church’s worship team. Rather than “busy,” she likes the term “active.”
For 33 years, Cynthia wrote and produced the radio broadcast The Heartbeat of the Home. The scripted radio drama/devotional broadcast aired on as many as 50 radio stations and two cable/digital television stations over the years. Cynthia was the editor of the ministry’s Backyard Friends magazine, a twenty-page, twice annual publication that reached 5,000 homes, churches, and parachurch outreaches.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Becky rocks a baby that rocked her world. Sixty years earlier, with her fiancé Drew in the middle of the Korean Conflict, Ivy throws herself into her work at a nursing home to keep her sanity and provide for the child Drew doesn’t know is coming. Ivy cares for Anna, an elderly patient who taxes Ivy’s listening ear until the day she suspects Anna’s tall tales are not the ramblings of dementia. They’re fragments of Anna’s disjointed memories of a remarkable life. Finding a faint thread of hope she can’t resist tugging, Ivy records Anna’s memoir, scribbling furiously after hours to keep up with the woman’s emotion-packed, grace-hemmed stories. Is Ivy’s answer buried in Anna’s past? Becky, Ivy, Anna–three women fight a tangled vine of deception in search of the blossoming simplicity of truth.
If you would like to read the first chapter of When The Morning Glory Blooms, go HERE.
MY REVIEW:
In When The Morning Glory Blooms, the stories of three unrelated women from different eras are woven together into a beautiful and meaningful tapestry for the heart. The common denominator between the three women is out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Present-day Becky spends her days caring for her daughter’s sweet son while her daughter completes her high school education. Ivy’s story takes place in 1951 when she finds herself expecting her fiance’s child after he is deployed to Korea. She meets and cares for Anna in a nursing home where Anna dictates her remarkable story about her life running a house of refuge for unwed mothers.
I’ll admit that books similar to When The Morning Glory Blooms are not my usual first choice in reading material but I am so glad that I had the opportunity to read it. While I liked everything about the book, I especially enjoyed Anna’s first-person narrative about her own experiences. I found those elements of the novel to be especially lyrical. I was happy to follow each woman’s journey as she grew in the strength and maturity of her faith.
When The Morning Glory Blooms examines unplanned pregnancies from several angles. The author does not attempt to offer easy answers but emphasizes the need of the young women for love and acceptance as well as preparation for their lives after they give birth with the importance of leading them to the Lord as a high priority. I would highly recommend this book , particularly for those who find themselves dealing with an unplanned pregnancy on any level.
