Bunny Medeiros

Late in reading this after years since my last Anita Shreve novel. The ending was a bit startling but the sequence of it made me think (read no other review that addressed this) that "forgiveness" was a big theme of the novel. Confession was threaded throughout the book as each loss was revealed, & when Linda finally shares her sexual abuse with the priest and receives not only his/God's forgiveness but her own, she becomes free to fully love Thomas in their earliest time together. Later this forgiveness allows her to find love two more times in her life. Thomas never forgives himself for the accident, for betraying his wives, and for his daughter's death. It haunts him in his writing & I think the final time they met Linda recognized his inability to forgive himself & saw how it had destroyed his spirit. All said, there is also the beauty of that "first love" in this story, and the agony of wondering what might have been.

History I was not aware of...characters rich and very individual... many social issues of the day in the plotline, issues sadly still part of our culture and not just in rural Kentucky. Good story to escape into.