Home In Drayton Valley, A (2012) - Plot & Excerpts
It's always sad to lose your best friend. But to lose them and be left with the promise of continuing with "Their life and making it Your own". That is what Tarsi is faced with. I can imagine adopting children, but I don't know if I could ever imagine stepping into the role of being wife to a man who just lost his most beloved wife, by honoring a promise. Guts is what it took, determination and a best friend's love. I would recommend this book if you need a book to bring to you down to earth and remember what life is really "All" about. Tarsi wanted a good life and a family. She just hadn't expected it to come neatly wrapped up and handed to her. Yet, family values, honor, friendship, spiritual values. These are the things you see as Tarsi moves on to a better life, "just not the way she expected" to get it. The author has a very nice way of turning the story around and including not only freedom of slaves (yet different status), showing what families go thru in life, no matter what their status or color...the same trials and they look for the same things...bringing up their children with good values; and prohibition and the changes it brought about. Joss and Tarsie are thrown together in a marriage of convenience when Joss's wife and Tarsie's dearest friend dies of cancer. It was Tarsie's dying wish that Tarsie take care of her two children and her husband Joss. Joss is anything but an ideal husband. He drinks too much, gambles away his paycheck, surly, neglects and ignores his children, prejudiced against people of color, combative and prone to losing his temper. He is also illiterate and a non-Christian. Tarsie married this man because she loved her friend. Can Tarsie's gentle loving Christian spirit bring this man to the Lord? Will he ever be the kind of man he needs to be to his children?The author did an excellent job of making Joss a despicable character. For the majority of the book I find him an unlikeable person. The only redeeming quality in him was that he loved Mary, his wife who died on the way to Drayton Valley. Joss first worked on the docks but when the dock washed away he had to find work in the vineyards. His foreman was a black man, Simon. Joss detested working under a black man. Tarsie became friends with Simon's wife and taught her to read. I loved the black couple. By the end of the book I felt like I knew them personally. They were that likeable.
What do You think about Home In Drayton Valley, A (2012)?
Very Good! People can change and see people for who they are with God's help!
—MiCr
I liked the story of true friendship and story of crossing the racial line.
—Caennis
I really enjoyed this book. It had a good story to it.
—Trice
