Echoes of Family by Barbara Claypole White

Echoes of Family
Barbara Claypole White

Lake Union

Marianne Stokes suffered a head injury in a car crash which killed her unborn child.

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“. . . an intricate page-turning story full of human failings and triumphs . . .”

The incident uncovers buried memories of a similar event in her teens and sends Marianne spiraling into a new phase of her bipolar disorder. Faced with massive guilt and a need to reconnect with those times, she impulsively returns to England, her birth country, and the Bedfordshire village of Newton Rushford where it all began. Unexpectedly the vicar of the parish is Reverend Gabriel Bonham, a man who has every right not to want to see her again, but without whom she can’t reconnect with their shared past.

Back in North Carolina, Marianne’s husband Darius and adopted adult daughter Jade pick up her trail. Abandoning the family’s recording studio they follow Marianne to England in time to witness her meltdown. Gabriel, Jade and Darius form an uneasy alliance with Marianne’s recovery at its heart, and Gabriel and Jade find an unexpected attraction to each other. As Marianne struggles to recover and identify the lost memories which brought her to her old home, it looks like a secret long buried may hold the key to absolution for both Marianne and Gabriel – but another tragedy threatens to unravel everything. Can the flawed once-lovers find redemption and true love once more?

In Echoes of Family, White weaves an intricate page-turning story full of human failings and triumphs that has the reader rooting for all the characters. The terrible affliction of bipolar disorder, and the effects it has on sufferers and those around them,is treated with compassion and deep  respect for the daily struggle to live a normal life. One for lovers of contemporary fiction.

Reviewer: Cindy A. Matthews