This week, the
Christian Fiction Blog Alliance
Promises to Keep
Bethany House (February 1, 2011)
by
Ann Tatlock
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ann Tatlock is the author of the Christy Award-winning novel All the Way Home. She has also won the Midwest Independent Publishers Association “Book of the Year” in fiction for both All the Way Home and I’ll Watch the Moon. Her novel Things We Once Held Dear received a starred review from Library Journal and Publishers Weekly calls her “one of Christian fiction’s better wordsmiths, and her lovely prose reminds readers why it is a joy to savor her stories.” Ann lives with her husband and daughter in Asheville, North Carolina.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Eleven-year-old Roz (Rosalind) Anthony and her family have just moved to Mills River, Illinois, to escape an abusive situation. Only days after settling into their new home, they are surprised to find the previous owner, Tillie Monroe, on their front porch reading the newspaper.
Though her sons have sold the house and sent her to a facility for the aged, she is determined to die in the place she lived her life, and somehow manages to find her way “home” day after day. Feeling sympathy for the elderly woman, Roz’s mother allows Tillie to move back in.
Mara Nightingale becomes Roz’s first friend in Mills River. In spite of their many differences, the girls discover they have something in common that binds them together–both are hiding secrets. So they make a promise–“cross my heart and hope to die”–never to tell anyone else. When danger stalks the Anthonys, Tillie exhibits unimaginable courage and selfless love in her determination to protect the family she has adopted as her own.
If you would like to read the first chapter of Promises to Keep, go HERE.
Watch the book trailer:
MY REVIEW:
With the appropriate setting of the turbulent late 1960’s, Promises to Keep is the poignant story of a family torn apart by domestic abuse and an elderly lady displaced from the home she loves. As the lives of these hurting people become entertwined, they find their hearts becoming knit together as family.
Told from the point of view of eleven year old Roz, the reader is offered a unique view of her first encounters with racism as well as her confusion over the reasons for her father’s absence from her life. Convinced that her mother and father should be together, Roz is easily convinced to keep her father’s secrets when he shows up in their new town – secrets that could be dangerous ones.
Tatlock’s characters were excellent, especially Tillie who was convinced that God had sent her to live with the Anthony family for a reason and did her best to demonstrate her faith to them. The emotionally charged plot moved at a steady pace that was relieved by occasional humor. There were times that I became frustrated with Roz and the bad decisions she made, then realized that her choices were perfectly normal for a child her age who yearned for her daddy and didn’t understand why they couldn’t all be together again.
All in all, Promises to Keep was a satisfying book and I would recommend it.
