It is no secret that we at She Reads are huge fans of Susan Meissner. She authored The Shape of Mercy, one of our Fall Selections. Her latest novel, White Picket Fences is most certainly worth reading as well.
When her black sheep brother disappears, Amanda Janvier eagerly takes in her sixteen year-old niece Tally. The girl is practically an orphan: motherless, and living with a father who raises Tally wherever he lands– in a Buick, a pizza joint, a horse farm–and regularly takes off on wild schemes. Amanda envisions that she, her husband Neil, and their two teenagers can offer the girl stability and a shot at a “normal” life, even though their own storybook lives are about to crumble.
Seventeen-year-old Chase Janvier hasn’t seen his cousin in years, and other than a vague curiosity about her strange life, he doesn’t expect her arrival will affect him much–or interfere with his growing, disturbing interest in a long-ago house fire that plagues his dreams unbeknownst to anyone else.
Tally and Chase bond as they interview two Holocaust survivors for a sociology project, and become startlingly aware that the whole family is grappling with hidden secrets, with the echoes of the past, and with the realization that ignoring tragic situations won’t make them go away.
Will Tally’s presence blow apart their carefully-constructed world, knocking down the illusion of the white picket fence and reveal a hidden past that could destroy them all–or can she help them find the truth without losing each other?
You can read the first chapter of White Picket Fences here.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I enjoy the books that show you truth in real life trials and victories. i would enjoy reading The White Picket Fences. Thanks for serving the Lord with your gifts.
I love this book!!!! I read it last month when I found it at my library! Amazing (and I just finished her book A Window to the World and it was wonderful as well!) I think I might have stumbled onto a new favorite author! Thank you so much!
Susan’s latest is on my TBR list! I’ve heard wonderful things about it – looking forward to digging in!
Hi,
I read both of Susan Meissner’s books, “The Shape of Mercy” and “White Picket Fences”. I found both of them so good and so enlightening. “White Picket Fences”, even though a fiction, but if one would look beyond that and find how true that is, about parent’s with children living in cars. Especially in our current situation, with job losses etc. I have seen this on the news more than once in the last couple of years.
Thank you for the review. I haven’t read any of her books. I’ve wishlisted a few on Paperback Swap and am going to check my library this week.
Thanks for the kind words of affirmation! You’ve all brightened my day. Blessings back to each one,
Susan
thanks for the great book review and even an excerpt. i loved it.