Abbe is a restless young mother living on the outskirts of Honolulu with her husband, Greg, the pastor at a small church. Their lives are suddenly riven by tragedy when their three-year old daughter, Cleo, is struck and killed by a car.
As Greg turns to God and community for comfort, Abbe turns inward and reflects upon her own troubled past. Isla Morley brilliantly weaves the story of Abbe's grief with a gripping tale of her tempestuous childhood in apartheid South Africa - and how Abbe's father, a villainous drunk, held their family hostage for decades with his rage, until they finally began to plot their escape from him.
Come Sunday, by Isla Morley, is a spellbinding drama about a woman breaking free of her grief and of her past, and what it takes to revive hope when all seems lost. - excerpt from back cover.
My Review:
In this wonderful story of what good can come from tragedy, we are immersed in the lives of the parents of Cleo who has just been taken from them at three years old. We are witnesses to what happens in the midst of loss and how each person handles the grief in a different manner. Greg, a pastor, feels that he has to hold onto God, while Abbe is the extreme opposite and wonders where God was the night Cleo's life was taken.
This is a very moving novel in that you can see both sides of the tragic coin and loss being portrayed in their lives and even as Abbe tries to see the parallel in her own life as a child living with an abusive father in Africa. The choices of those around her and even that of her mother come full circle as the book comes to a closure and once more Abbe can see that Sundays do come again and with it hope is restore and life begins again.
I received this book, compliments of Picador Publishers in exchange for my honest and humble review of this amazing book. It was hard to read about losing a child, being a parent, but it also allowed me the rare opportunity to feel the heartache each parent faces without having to live it in the real world. I think Isla Morley did an outstanding job at conveying this to her readers and would rate this book a 5 out of 5 stars. The book is available in paperback.
For more information on the book, the author or where to obtain a copy, click on the link below:
www.picadorusa.com/Book.aspx?isbn=9780312429775
The best part of this review is that Picador Publishers and Isla Morley are going to give a copy of the book away to one lucky follower of my blog. Here are the guidelines:
1. You must be a resident of the US or Canada to be eligible. No P.O. Boxes please and you must be a follower of this blog to win.
2. I must have a way to contact you, so be sure to leave your email address in your comment.
3. I will close the comments on August 10th and pick a winner. I will be contacting the winner to obtain their mailing address by email. The winner will have three days to respond. If I do not hear from them in three days, I will select another winner.
4. Leave a comment and let me know what this book would mean to you to read it.
Remember, the giveaway ends on August 10th!
