Book Review

The Language of Sycamores by Lisa Wingate

Book Review

The Language of Sycamores

By

Lisa Wingate

*****

5 Out of 5 Stars

The third book in the Tending Roses series is a lyrical and moving novel that grips you by the heart in the very first pages and never lets you go. Its central theme is that money and material success can't bring true happiness or purpose to life, yet there is much more to digest as we fall into the story. Wingate writes like a quilter; cutting, patching, embroidering and sewing the very human dramas of loss, emptiness, illness and fear into a beautiful and thoughtful story that keeps us warm long after we're done reading.

It sometimes seems that bad things happen all at once, leaving us breathless and dazed in a figurative heap on the floor. This is what happens to Karen, Kate's sister from Tending Roses, when she finds out that her cervical cancer might be back and she is downsized from her highly successful tech job in the same afternoon. Whirling in a sea of fear and confusion she turns to the piano that night, playing for the first time in many years. Her reconnection to her music lights a small spark inside of her that is fanned further when Kate calls to ask her to visit the farm.

Karen decides to return to the farm for the first time since their Grandmother's death. She's avoided it because she wants to imagine Grandma Rose is still there, kvetching, cooking and generally interfering with everyone. Then Kate tells her that her pilot husband James has been visiting fairly often when he has layovers in Kansas City. He has been working on the land they inherited from Rose and spending time fishing with Dell, the young girl who lives near the farm. She is both stunned and slightly jealous that he has been bonding with Dell and her family and hasn't said a word to her about it. It causes her to realize that they have a distance between them that has grown larger and larger. It started when she miscarried on the day of her mother's death, which was also the day they found out she had cancer. James wanted to move on quickly and Karen never really took time to grieve.