Gone. It was all gone. The reason she sold half her wardrobe to buy a ticket all the way to Nebraska. The reason she turned down marriage to the twice-widowed butcher back in Cincinnati, Ohio. The reason she was on the ten-thirty Union Pacific to Whitewater Rapids. Now there was no reason to be there.
Wallowing in self-pity, for the first time in her life, she felt adrift without a home, a family, or anyone to care. She always had someone to take care of and be part of before. Now that her father had passed, and his professor’s wages with him, Lorelei needed to find a new life for herself. This position as town librarian was to be it. Now it, too, was gone.
Our Review: Having read and reviewed a number of Ms. Payne’s works, An Unexpected Wife is her best effort to date. On reading the above passage, we were drawn in immediately by the fear and sadness, the need to simply give in to fate and give up entirely. Who/What/Why we asked—and kept turning the pages to learn more about Lorelei and Luke Foster, the man who “rescues” her and is in turn rescued. This is a wonder of a story.
The specter of losing everything and not knowing how the to survive in this new world draws me right in, and I want to know how she solved her problems and arrived at a happy ending.
ReplyDelete