We have all heard of the Great Depression from either our history books or perhaps a family member has shared their experience with you, but very few have been impacted by it except those who have experienced it. I have heard it said, that the reason so many people are 'hoarders' is that they remember living through the Great Depression years. It is a by-product of those times. Yet we don't really understand or even empathize with those who have because it hasn't impacted us. I have had the distinct honor to read a series of novels by Kathryn Spurgeon who has based each of her novels around the true stories of her parents or grandparents stories of what they dealt with during their times of growing up.
In the novel The Promise Child, she takes readers into the very heart of what the Great Depression felt like for the Trimble/Pope family. For Sibyl Trimble Pope, she remembers the life of prosperity her family had had during her younger years when she was a child. They never had want for anything. They may have watched the beginning signs of struggle for others but it never really impacted them until she married and watched the signs of the times and had hoped that they would weather the storm. She watched her father leave their family and divorce her mother leaving their children behind to fend for themselves. This was a time in which divorce was considered a bit of a curse in small towns. No one did that. No one had an affair in affluent families and simply walk away for greener pastures elsewhere. But that is what her father had done.
Now with the Depression hitting everyone, her mother and remaining siblings were struggling to make ends meet. To find ways to make clothes and shoes last a bit longer. To find ways to even put food on the table. Sibyl herself in her own new family feels like she needs to help. Her own husband Fremont hold on to the filling station they purchased to help make ends meet. Yet with fewer and fewer people being able to fill their cars, their own business is falling apart. She tries to reach out to her father who is well enough to help but figures out that they need to manage their finances better and refuses to help any of them. Her only option is to take her father up on a job offer and leave her family for a short time to send back money working in the bigger cities or pack up what they have and head for the west where people have been heading since this began.
I received A Promise Child by Kathryn Spurgeon compliments of Memory House Publishing. This really opened my eyes up to the struggle of families have to endure the effects of the Great Depression. Trying to stretch your food sources as much as possible, even doing without food so your own children didn't go hungry. It really grabs hold of you and makes you a witness to what is happening not only to the Pope family but others that they are watching go through it with them. I didn't want to put this book down because I was emotionally invested in their family and their struggles. I was praying and rooting for them to make it every step of the way and for me, those are ear-marks of an exceptional book and the reason for my 5 out of 5 stars.
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