A few weeks ago, I inherited someone's cast off Android and he kindly installed a Kindle app on it. Since then, I've gone a bit gung-ho in seeking free novels on Amazon to read. Today, on the freebie list, I found, Remember Love, by Jessica Nelson which is part of the series, The Women of Manatee Bay.
The key verse that this novel revolves around is Isaiah 42:3, which
says, "A bruised reed shall He not break, and the smoking flax shall He not
quench: He shall bring forth judgment to truth."
Katrina (Kitty) Ross and Alec Monroe have a long history together. They had been childhood sweethearts, but Kitty stood Alec up at the altar on their wedding day, and Alec left town. They are reunited ten years later when he roars back to Manatee Bay on his motorcycle. The former wild boy is now a successful businessman and has returned to open a new business in his hometown, but is also hoping to sniff out information about Kitty. When he finds out that she is one of the lessees in the building that he is buying, his interest in her picks up again, until he finds out that she had withheld knowledge of the existence of their now deceased son from him. This has wounded him greatly because Kitty knew that if he had known about their son, he would not have abandoned them. He had been abandoned by his own father as a child and would not have subjected his own child to the same fate.
Alec vacillates from wanting revenge against Kitty for hurting him in this way, to wanting her to be his wife. He is also wanting to show the townspeople who had rejected him in the past that he has made something success out of himself. Kitty, on the other hand, is the obvious bruised reed in this story. She has faced rejection and abandonment all of her life, from a father who walked out on her and her mother, from her mother who was not very loving towards Kitty, and from the deaths of her mother and her son, Joe, in a car accident. Kitty, who had become a Christian shortly after Joe was born, has been struggling with her faith since the deaths of Joe and her mother. Alec has become a believer during the past year, but he's still grappling with desires for vengeance.
Both of them can see that the other has changed greatly since they were youths, and are attracted to what each other has now become. However, Kitty still has difficulty in trusting Alec, because he won't say aloud whether he loves her or forgives her of what she had done. Alec is more of a man of action than of words; he doesn't know how to scale the walls around Kitty's heart. There comes a point in the story when the tables are turned; Kitty needs to forgive Alec for withholding information from her if there is any hope of reconciliation between the two of them.
Much of this novel touches on the issue of forgiveness and the healing that can come when it is given. There were a lot of people that needed to give forgiveness and a lot of people who needed to receive it in this story. There was one point in the story that felt a little abrupt, and it was the revelation of the details surrounding the car accident that led to the deaths of Kitty's mother and Joe. There was a little bit of foreshadowing of this, but I think that I would have liked a couple more hints because it did feel abrupt and sudden to me. However, once that portion of the plot was revealed, it led to quite an important development in the life of a minor character who had been kept hidden until this point, and also to Kitty, because it caused her to realize that it was possible for her to believe that Alec might be able to forgive her. I thought that this part was nicely done.
I loved the line in which Alec thought that the Lord said to him, "I've made all things new, Son." Just reading that is like breathing in hope. Alec really needed it at that point too.
This was a good story. I hope to read more of the Women of Manatee Bay.
