January 1, 2025
When Honey vowed to love CT in sickness and health, she never imagined spending their retirement years hiding the guns so CT won't shoot the neighbors, putting out literal fires, and watching True Grit at least once a day--all because her beloved husband now has frontotemporal dementia and needs round-the-clock care. Their impulsive adult daughter Jewel, while talking on the phone with her mother, hears her unspoken cry for help and uproots her recalcitrant teenager to move back to rural Oregon and help on the family farm. The farm's transformation into a honey-themed B&B is secondary to the transformation in the hearts of the family members as they navigate an unforgiving illness with grace, humor, and some very relatable frustration. VERDICT Equally hilarious and heart-rending, Carlson's (The Christmas Tree Farm) novel draws on her own experience as a caregiver to provide a devastatingly real novel of deep, quiet faith in the face of a family's worst fear. Pat Simmons and Katie Powner explore similar themes in Lean on Me and A Flicker of Light.
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December 9, 2024
A family copes with personal and health challenges in the tender latest from Carlson (The Christmas Tree Farm). Honey McKerry, 66, is doing her best to care for her dementia-stricken husband, CT, who frequently forgets where he is, injures himself, and wanders off their property. Their daughter, Jewel, a single mother, decides to return to their Oregon farm to help out. When she arrives to find her mother at the ER with her injured father, who doesn’t recognize her, she fears she’s bitten off more than she can chew. Thankfully, her parents’ charming neighbor Miguel is willing to help out after CT falls again and Jewel comes up with a plan to purchase a one-story modular home for her parents and turn the farmhouse into a bed and breakfast. To make it happen, she’ll also need the help of high school flame Aaron Hanford, who owns the modular home company and is looking to reignite their romance. All the while, Jewel grapples with the pain of watching her father become less and less like the man she knows. The sections from CT’s perspective are powerfully rendered, and Carlson adds emotional depth with moments of humor and the characters’ enduring faith in the face of loss. This is sure to tug on readers’ heartstrings.
February 1, 2025
Moving home to Oregon seemed like the right idea at the right time for Jewel McKerry. Jewel's daughter, Cooper, would benefit from a fresh start, and Jewel's mother, Honey, could use some help caring for her father, CT. But once Jewel and Cooper arrive in Sweet Springs, Jewel has some second thoughts about her new life. Cooper is still mad about being uprooted from her old life in California, and Jewel's mother has been downplaying the status of her father's frontotemporal dementia. However, it isn't long before Jewel comes up with a few ideas, including turning the old family farmhouse into a B&B, that just might make the future a bit brighter for everyone. With her latest heartwarming book, Carlson not only delivers a charming bucolic setting and an engaging plot enhanced by an intergenerational cast of characters and a hint of romance but also writes with compassion and grace about the everyday challenges found in caring for a loved one with early onset dementia.
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