Shades of Morning »

MARLO SCHALESKY is the author of several acclaimed novels, including Christy Award winner Beyond the Night.  A graduate of Stanford University, Marlo also has a masters of theology from Fuller Theological Seminary.  She’s a regular columnist for Power for Living and lives with her husband, Bryan, and five children in California.

Marnie didn’t know much about miracles.
Mistakes maybe. Accidents. And monstrous mess-ups. She knew a lot about those.
But miracles? Those were for other people.
 
 
Marnie Wittier has life just where she wants it. Quiet. Peaceful. No drama. A long way away from her past. In the privacy of her home, she fills a box with slips of paper, scribbled with her regrets, sins, and sorrows. But that’s nobody else’s business. Her bookstore/coffee shop patrons, her employees, her friends from church—they all think she’s the very model of compassion and kindness.
 
Then Marnie’s past creeps into her present when her estranged sister dies and makes Marnie guardian of her fifteen-year-old son—a boy Marnie never knew existed. And when Emmit arrives, she discovers he has Down syndrome—and that she’s woefully unprepared to care for him. What’s worse, she has to deal with Taylor Cole, her sister’s attorney, a man Marnie once loved—and abandoned.
            As Emmit (and Taylor) work their way into her heart, Marnie begins to heal. But when pieces of her dismal past surface again, she must at last face the scripts of paper in her box, all the regrets and sorrows. Can she do it? Or will she run again?

Publishers Weekly

Book and coffee shop owner Marnie Wittier lives on the opposite end of the country from where she grew up; she needs that much distance from her past. But her past won’t stay away; her estranged sister, Rose, dies and Marnie is named guardian of Rose’s 15-year-old son, Emmit, who has Down syndrome. Another complication: Rose’s attorney is Taylor Cole, whom Marnie once loved. The complicated family history unreels in the narrative, alternating with Marnie’s learning to cope with the sweet and very challenging Emmit. Schalesky leavens a story that could be sad with friendly, quirky touches: Marnie’s customers, her iguana Max. Some devices seem contrived: Marnie’s box of memorabilia that signifies major life events, the cute meeting between Marnie and Taylor. But Christy-award winning Schalesky (Beyond the Night) has a good feel for psychological complexity. And a reader won’t see the nice twist at the end coming until it hits like the California earthquake that opens the book. The story’s not 100% plausible, but it’s satisfying and charming. (June)