Beverly and David have welcomed a new baby boy into their lives. Suddenly the future is changed when Dave dies in a hit-and-run accident. Devastated, Beverly does her best to cope with being a young widow and single parent. She finds she doesn't really fit anywhere--not with the older widows, not with divorced women, and not with married people.
Bolstered by her faith, she carries on. Simultaneiously helped and hindered by the well-meaning efforts of others, she longs for the day when she will no longer by the "ward service project." Eventually she reluctantly re-enters the dating scene. After enduring her allotment of blind-dates-from-hell, she runs into an old college boyfriend who is divorced and fighting for custody of his three daughters. They struggle to make their relationship work, as both of them face their own Unfinished Business.
Excerpt
She turned on the radio to drown out the car noise. They were playing the song that David had sung to her when he had proposed. Tears came to her eyes. A little voice from the back seat, said, "Okay, Mama?"
"Yes, honey, Mama's okay. Just a little bit sad today." She pulled into the cemetery. Since there was no stone in place yet, she had to find Dave in relation to the trees and the other stones. He was in between two pine trees and down from "Winnifred Johnston, Beloved Wife and Mother." She reached into the backseat to get the flowers.
"Fowers," said Davey. From his carseat, he had picked every blossom from the bouquet. Scattered in the back seat were ransacked roses, limp lilies and decapitated daisies. There remained a vase full of stems and a couple of ferns. "Fowers."
Beverly was livid. She scooped up some of the flowers from the floor of the car and retrieved a couple of rosebuds off of the seat. Grabbing the vase, she angrily marched over to Dave's gravesite, throwing flower fragments--rose remains, deceased daisies and lifeless lilies--on the ground. She started yelling. "Happy Anniversary! You're supposed to get me flowers on our anniversary! You're supposed to be alive!"
When two men hit the reset button and decide to go out looking for the good in the world, they not only find it but also a lot more.
P.S. The title is listed on Amazon under Look for Something Good by Robert Drews (not by Robert H. Drews)
This exceptional book, Celebrating the Gift of Being Alive, has the perfect thoughts and words for birthdays, graduations, engagements, marriages, and any life celebration or family tradition.
