This book is about a young couple, that meet up and fall in love in at first sight. They end up getting pregnant right out of the gate and Jeremy makes the decision to uproot himself from his successful New York career and move to Boone Creek, to follow Lexie, who thinks it's important for their child to be raised where she was raised. So rather quickly he packs up his New York apartment and moves down to Boone Creek, but by trade Jeremy is a writer. His writing mainly focuses on disproving frauds and hoaxes, the whole nature versus nurture, and comes from a scientific explanation for everything kind of stand point. However throughout the course of the book, Jeremy is faced with writers block, and he seems desperate to write a good article, all the while dealing with some tumultuous struggles between himself and Lexie. Jeremy seems to be going to desperate measures to come up with a good story, and finds himself turning to Doris (Lexi's grandmother) for inspirations. He is forced to make a decision that will change the course of his career. He's faced with deciding what is worth more to him, what he has believed to be true all these years, or what is true?
I can totally relate to Jeremy's position, as in my pre-injury career I was working in a line of work that I was VERY passionate about and believed that I was doing wonderful things for the people around me. Sure there were bumps along the road, but when aren't there? I really used those bumps as opportunities for growth, and didn't let them steal my passion or bog me down. Unfortunately, my career choice became my demise. I was assaulted by the very person I was soo passionate about supporting. I felt I had done him soo much good, and I was faced with soo many contradictions all at once. Nothing made sense anymore. How could this happen to me? I had done everything according to plans and they had literally blown up in my face and landed me in the hospital with a severe injury that would end my career. My passion, my life. All gone in a flash. It's a really hard feeling to relate to but it sure spoke to me in this novel.
You have to learn a new passion, and you look back at everything so differently. Suddenly those "bumps along the road" weren't learning opportunities, they were warnings to run as fast as you can. Signs of cracks in the foundation you were working so hard to build.
I would highly recommend this book for anyone who has seen how tragedy can transform who you are to who you will become, and how fresh perspective really does have a significant bearing on bringing things into clearer focus when they are becoming hazy.
One of the quotes that I loved from this book was:
"Though he sometimes reflected on the trials he and Lexie had gone through before marriage, he knew they had emerged from them stronger as a couple. When he looked at Lexie now, he knew he had never carried for anyone as deeply. What he didn't know, what he couldn't know, was the hardest days were yet to come." (pg. 120)
When I first read that quote, it made me think that parenthood was going to be a challenge for them, or that their baby was going to be born with problems due to the umbilical cord issues. I really didn't imagine that the book was going to end the way it did. In an effort not to spoil the ending for you I'm not going to say what happens, but to me, it certainly was true that you really never do know how things are going to turn out. You are going to be challenged in life in ways you never imagined possible. You will be faced with impossible decisions, and forced through tormenting emotions. Life is hard, but man it sure is amazing. The good thing about being through something horrible is it makes all the good things that much greater. It's a process to get yourself in that head-space where you can even see the good through the bad, but you really do emerge on the other side of tragedy for the better, and if you haven't gotten to the point where it seems better, keep working, digging your way through the trenches. BUT, don't ever stop being aware of the realities of those trenches, because just when you think you are through something else will be ready and waiting to claw you back down, you have to dust yourself off and carry on. Reminding yourself all the time of the amazing things surrounding you.
At the end of the book things came full circle for Jeremy, and ironically enough, his full circle left him in the same position I feel I am in today. So incredibly in love with life because of the people that are in it, and open to all possibilities, but painfully aware of the unfairness that has frayed the edges.
Amy
