Patricia Sprinkle

Dear Readers,

10 years ago I read The Remember Box by Patricia Sprinkle. It is still a book I recommend to readers along with its sequel Carley's Song. They are both out of print now, but our used book dept gets copies once in a while and I make sure to mention them when I get a chance. Since then I have been waiting for another one like them from Patricia. Hold up the Sky is what I have been waiting for.

A southern genre book about 4 different women who are about at the lowest point one can be at in their lives. Mamie has just found out she has congestive heart failure, but feels like she has work to do yet. She swears her daughter to secrecy and continues on with the work she feels God has called her to do.

Bill Waits has the perfect name for her. She waits for a lot of things. Her husband's check to arrive each month, rain so her garden will grow so she will have vegetables and peaches to sell, she is really waiting for life as she is busy raising her special needs daughter.

Margaret' s husband takes a large sip of his coffee one morning and announces that he wants a divorce. With no warning and with no marketable skills Margaret's world is sent in a tail spin. This was the life she always wanted, a beautiful house, children and a husband to love. How can she go home to her father's house again.

And lastly there is Emerita. An illegal immigrant who has a story to tell, but no one to trust it with. These 4 very independent and different woman are thrown together in the middle of a hot and dry Georgia summer, with a drought that seems to drag on and is stealing the life from them and the land. When they all meet up in a hot kitchen while canning the few vegetables and fruit that they are able to save they find out they need each other more than they thought.

This is just one of those good stories books. You are gently included in each woman's story. They are not pretty stories, but they are close to real life. Homelessness, divorce, missing husbands, illegal immigrants, drought and death. They have all made headlines at one point or another in the past few weeks, but most of them actually touch our lives also.

Happy Reading