Monday, May 27, 2013

The Gift by Danielle Steel

I chose this book to read because Danielle Steel is enormously popular with some folks and I chose this title in particular because I'd been told by someone I can't remember now that this was one of her better books.

In this book, a very close-knit and happy family is devastated by loss when their 5-year-old daughter dies of illness.  The marriage is strained; the lost child's brother starts taking his suppers at a local diner because his mother never cooks any more.

At the diner, he meets a young waitress.

Her story is that she went to prom, and her date got drunk, and somebody else took her home - and he knocked her up.

Her dad goes ballistic and insists that she go to a convent-run home for unwed mothers.  She can't stand it, and she decides to take a bus anywhere, as long as it's somewhat far from home.

The first stop the bus makes on her journey is a truck stop where a sign in the window advertises that the restaurant is looking for a waitress.  She applies and is hired.

The two young people fall in love and what is interesting about the female character is how very level-headed and restrained she is.  And, while she is not going to school, she keeps up her studies so that she can graduate on time.  I am very impressed; I wouldn't begin to know what to do to keep up with my studies in a similar situation.  I'd probably just read nineteenth-century novels and discuss Anna Karenina with bartenders.  I mean, wouldn't you?



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