They say you can never go home again, and Marlene Queens has done her best to make sure that old adage is true.  Now, her Aunt has died and it’s up to her to sell the house and tie up the remaining loose ends before she says goodbye to her home town for good – but it isn’t that easy.  Marlene has a closet full of ghosts she needs to clean out. 

Marlene was the unexpected child born to two mentally challenged people.  Unwanted by her mother’s parents, Marlene is raised by an “aunt,” the step-mother of her developmentally disabled father.  Growing up, she spent more time with the pastor and his family than she did at home, embarrassed by her child-like father.  When she is old enough to leave home, she takes off.  The romance she has kindled growing up is in danger of becoming an adult reality, and with two disabled parents, she is in fear of having disabled children.  In nursing school, she marries a doctor and unexpectedly has a healthy daughter, but her husband leaves her.  Marlene begins nursing the regrets of leaving the man she loved all her life, and although they keep in contact, she can’t bring herself to admit her failures.

Vic Brewster is the pastor’s son.  Growing up with Marlene, the two of them develop a tight bond that endures, despite her leaving home and marrying someone else, and despite him falling in love and marrying someone else in an effort to move on.  His wife dies, and now Marlene is coming home, but she’s carrying a secret with her.  Can their lifelong affection survive? 

Simple Gifts is a heart warming story about mistakes we make along the course of a lifetime and a lesson in learning to grow up and away from the past that hangs over us.  Marlene has every day problems, like enabling her grown daughter to the point her daughter depends on mom for everything. She has deeper emotional issues - her unexplored feelings for her now deceased, disabled father and her perceived reception from an overbearing aunt.  Watching her move through these emotions and settling these issues reminds us all that it’s never too late to reconcile the past – and we might just find it wasn’t as bad as we remember.  I enjoyed Simple Gifts and would recommend it.

November 22, 2007