Readers who appreciate decent, appealing characters living lives of tenderness and honesty, coming out winners against all odds....
Will surely love The Legacy. If I had the contacts and the power to do so, this book would be a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. It deserves that and much more because this story demonstrates the finest of what we all would like America and Americans to be.
Maggie Claydon grew up in a Florida orphans's Home with only the doting Francine Everhart as caregiver. At age eighteen she goes out into the world to make her own way, knowing Mrs. Everhart is nearby to provide loving support. When Maggie is twenty-three, an official letter arrives from a New York City lawyer. She's inherited property from grandparents that she did not know existed. The property is rundown, it's residents all senior citizens with nowhere else to go. Maggie rolls up her sleeves and digs in, determined that this neglected old building will be brought up to code, will shine again and that it's inhabitants will fel secure and loved.
Maggie is a throughly decent, compassionate girl. Her innocence and generous hearted turn makes every stranger want to be her friend. NYPD Officer Sean Murphy thinks Maggie and her building code dilemma might be just the thing to bring his younger brother Jake back to life. Jake's history is harrowing. On Christmas Eve, more than three years ago, Jake came home from cutting down a Christmas tree to find his wife and two young children had been brutally murdered. Jake has contemplated suicide, tried burying his horror in alcohol, and has withdrawn from everyone. He's finally learned to hide his misery away, but life means nothing to him. Sean urges him to help Maggie bring her tenement up to code. After seeing what Maggie is up against and meeting the elderly residents, Jake reluctantly decides to do ONE GOOD DEED. By book's end, everyone learns that good deeds - loving legacies - never die. Love is returned in kind through small and large acts down through generations.
OK. That sets up the story and it's all I'm telling you. Read this book for yourself. Maggie, Jake, and everyone else in The Legacy represent positive old fashioned values in a contemporary setting. I recommend this book to both teens and adults, despite some mild swearing and loving sexualty. Ms. Cadelo's second book is a contemporary psychodrama called
Loyalties. If it's anything like her first, I want to be first in line to read it.