A Flicker of Light

 Once upon a time, there was a man named Miner McGee who sought after the greatest treasure and riches. He heard that there was a great diamond in the Montana mountains.  He hiked up the mountain and got caught in a blizzard.  When the authorities were about to go up the mountain to find him, they saw the light of his headlamp flicker on. 

This was a story Juniper Jones often told her granddaughter, Bea, and it was Bea's favorite story.  Bea is at a cross-roads in life--her husband has lost his job, they have moved in with her father who doesn't seem to like her husband, and she just found out she's pregnant. Other kinks in the works are that Bea's mother passed away a couple of years ago and neither Bea nor her father have fully grieved her passing.  While the turmoil of moving in with her father and all that entails is going on, Juniper, her father's mother is sliding into Alzheimer's dementia, and her father's next door neighbor has the hots for him and he's just not ready for that kind of relationship.  

This book is about grief, about secrets, about standing on your own two feet, and about grace.  I am not sure what I expected for the end of the book to be, but I felt it was rather abrupt and wished the book had been longer even though Katie Powner tied up the loose ends rather nicely. I was just left wanting something more, I'm not sure what, but just more. For that reason alone I give it four stars.  I loved the setting--my daughter once lived in a small Western Montana town and was actually an EMT/first responder for her county there. Imagining the places, fictitious as they were, was not a difficult thing to do, and there is no better place to set a story like this one. 

Bethany House and NetGalley.com provided the copy I read for this review.  All opinions expressed are solely my own.