In Promises To Keep we meet, Roz, an eleven year old girl, not quite understanding why she, her mother and brother had to leave home. Roz befriends, Mara, a little girl, who is holding secrets of her own. They promise one another to keep their secrets to the end.
As the story begins we find this family in their new home in Illinois with a fresh start. As they are starting out on a new day they find a surprise on the front porch. They find, Tillie, a woman who did live her life in this home, but now is part of a new home in a nursing home she doesn't want any part of. She feels betrayed by her sons as they sold the house out from under her. All she wants to do is come back to die. To find rest and peace in the memories of the past.
Wally, the teenage son of Janis, wants Tillie gone. Why is she here anyway? More or less she is a thorn in Wally's side. Janis is trying to raise her family, escaping the past, but doesn't believe there is a God who cares one way or the other. Tillie, is a woman of faith and it becomes clear God has opened the door for Tillie to become part of this family.
Everyone in this story is searching for something. They are searching for answers. The question is, "Are they willing to face the truths before them?" The truth I learned? This is not our home. We have a home in heaven waiting for us with a Savior waiting to greet us with arms wide open.
This book was a gift from Bethany House for it's review.
Ann Tatlock is the author of the Christy Award-winning novel All the Way Home. She has also won the Midwest Independent Publishers Association "Book of the Year" in fiction for both All the Way Home and I'll Watch the Moon. Her novel Things We Once Held Dear received a starred review from Library Journal and Publishers Weekly calls her "one of Christian fiction's better wordsmiths, and her lovely prose reminds readers why it is a joy to savor her stories." Ann lives with her husband and daughter in Asheville, North Carolina. Visit www.anntatlock.com
