Category:  Family Publisher: PublishAmerica ISBN-10:  I4137I6725 Type: Fiction Pages: 200 Copyright: June 2004 ISBN-13: 9781413716726 - Elizabeth Cranston believes that divorce is a disease that carried her daddy away and has sickened her mother, Anne. After Mother recovers, Elizabeth hears Grandpa say that they should pray for a man to marry her. Elizabeth hatches a plan and creates havoc as she searches the neighborhood. During her search she learns that evil exists in the world. It is a humorous and tender story of love and laughter, heartaches and tears. Elizabeth meets John Hunt, a man called Smokey, and she chooses him to marry her mother. She has no doubt that Mother will have no say in the matter. Her quest causes much mischief and earns her spankings and tongue-lashings. Elizabeth starts school and is not prepared when racism lifts its ugly head, but the little family overcomes illness, murder, a stalker and the loss of a baby girl.

Bixler
January 23, 2007: Precocious would be the adjective that most people would use to describe Elizabeth. Me, I would quickly say that might be so, but to me, the better descriptor would be ?touched by God.? When a child learns about Jesus and He becomes real to her, there is no other faith that can be so readily seen than in that of a child. And so, when Elizabeth, in Elizabeth?s Choice by Mary Edwards, prayed to God for a new Daddy, she expected her prayers to be answered. And when she saw a man come walking down the road, dust blowing so that he looked like he was gliding along, she knew at once that this was the man. So she asked him to marry them! Readers of this enchanting, delightful book will find themselves moving back into their childhood. And they will quickly become best friends with Elizabeth. She?s funny, she?s ?too big for her britches,? she has an avid interest in words and what they mean?and she?s prone to listen to other people?s private conversations and then repeat the new words she?s learned, oftentimes getting her into a heap of trouble! Suitable for teens to adults of any age, the book is written as if it were by the six-year-old herself. Her thoughts are open, honest and . . .rambling. You can?t help but think you are sitting having this young girl tell you what?s been happening in her day. It is a tribute to the author that she has so successfully written a story that allows the reader to imagine that we are merely rereading a diary written during a child?s early years! The book opens when Elizabeth, together with her two younger sisters and her mother, are forced to move back to live with her grandparents because her ?real? daddy had left them. The year was 1929. The day they moved in, Elizabeth got sick from eating green tomatoes, and her Grandpa smacked her backside for disobeying him! She tried to seek comfort from her mother, but she had gone to bed sobbing in agony over something called divorce. Elizabeth was worried because she was so sick that she thought she might have also caught divorce and would die. She wondered if anybody would miss her when she died. Much of the story reflects back on the days of ?priming our pumps? to get water or bringing in the ?tub? and filling it with water so that the children could be washed right after the other. Times when growing and canning your own food was the norm and the vet and doctors came to you when they were needed. But, somehow, seeing all these activities through the eyes of this child makes them unique, heart-warming, and many times so funny you?ll be laughing out loud?I know I did!