Homestands, by Sally Bradley, is the first in the Chicago Wind series, which feature stories about second chances. The novel covers what I would call messy relationships, because it touches the topic of adultery, and its consequences in the lives of Mike and Meg Conner. Mike is a professional major league baseball player who unexpectedly runs into his ex-wife at a ball game...along with their five year old son, Terrell, whose existence has been unknown to Mike until this point. In fact, even at this accidental meeting, Mike is still not aware that Terrell is his son, but finds out the truth shortly after when he visits Meg to talk to her about rekindling their relationship.
Meg does not want to have anything to do with Mike, especially not after his betrayal and abandonment, and although she has been a believer for a year, she is not ready to forgive her ex-husband. She agrees to let Mike into the life that she built for herself and Terrell only because Mike threatens to go through the law courts to take Terrell away from her. Mike is angry that Meg had kept Terrell's existence a secret, but hopes that if he shows her forgiveness over keeping Terrell's birth a secret, that she would forgive him of his betrayal of their marriage. However, Mike and Meg need to work through anger, guilt, forgiveness, differences in faith, and more secrets before a reconciliation is possible between the two of them.
This novel covers a lot of ground: adultery, secret babies, a coming to faith story, struggles with forgiveness, spousal abuse, abortion, and a mentally unhinged stalker. Did I mention anything about messy relationships before? In spite of all these things, there was also hope in this story.
The author shows us that neither Meg nor Mike were blameless in the collapse of their marriage, but that both made choices with far reaching consequences. The tension ramps up when faith was tossed into the picture; we know that Meg must choose whether to forgive Mike or not, sooner or later, because there will be no healing without it.
I found Homestands to be a fascinating story about forgiveness, and will be looking out for more books by Sally Bradley.
