Bringing Maggie Home

I've enjoyed reading many of Kim Vogel Sawyer's books and I have found this newest one to be as engaging as her other books.

Hazel Mae is asked by her mother to take her little sister, Maggie,  with her to the blackberry woods and pick blackberries for a cobbler for their father. While Hazel is trying to scare a snake away from a bunny's nest, Maggie went missing.  The whole community searched for days to try to find Maggie to no avail.

Speed ahead seventy years.  Hazel overreacted to the disappearance of her sister by being overprotecting her daughter. Her daughter, Dianne, reacted to the overprotection by keeping a hands off policy with her own daughter, Meghan.

Meghan, in her working life is a cold-case detective, but she's off work due to being in a three-car pile up and breaking her foot.  Since she has to be off for six weeks, she goes to her grandmother's house for a visit.  As soon as she gets there she finds her mother there as well.

First thing, Kim has taken the situations of a family dynamic on the verge of eruption, and made it the core of her plot.  Hazel hasn't forgiven herself for Maggie's disappearance.  Dianne has built up a resentment of Hazel and Meghan, because of Hazel's overprotectiveness, and because Hazel has given Meghan the love she wants.

These three women all need something and Kim has brought about the filling of that need by bringing them all to the place where they have to reach to God because there is nowhere else to reach. She has shown that God is the only answer to the questions that haunt our lives.

I read this book much more slowly than normal because it needs to be pondered, perused, and puzzled over. This is a five star book, with two thumbs up, and a family reunion that brings healing with it.

My thanks to Waterbrook/Multnomah for allowing me to read and review this book.