by: Vickie McDonough

Dancing Word Writers Network

 

Title: Like A Watered Garden

Author: Patti Hill

Publisher: Bethany House Publishers

ISBN: 0-7642-2937-0

Genre: Inspirational/Women/Fiction

 

When Mibby Garrett’s husband is killed in an auto accident and she is left a widow with a fourteen-year-old son and a garden design business to run, she has a difficult time getting through the grief and facing each new day. Louise Giovanelli, best friend and back door neighbor, runs a bed and breakfast. Louise comes over each morning to check on Mibby and brings sweets from the breakfast she serves her guests. She gives Mibby a word of encouragement from the Lord. Besides the pressures of running a business and care for a teenage son, Mibby is being stalked.

Mibby is mad at Scott for leaving her to finish the final project on their house that they started before his untimely death, angry at God for allowing Scott to leave her alone, and afraid of the stalker. She is also scared of getting close to a new client whom she is attracted to. Plus, she knows she’s not being a good mother to Kyle and finds it so difficult to face the people in town that she can’t even go get groceries. Will Mibby get past her overwhelming grief and depression to be the mother she wants to be? Will she face the reality of stalker’s identity before it is too late?

Patti Hill, has woven a touching and realistic story describing with great accuracy the paralyzing effect of grief and depression. Written in first person, LIKE A WATERED GARDEN, tells of the battles Mibby fights to move through each day, living with memories of her life with Scott and the anger that he would leave her to carry this burden alone. Yet she believes that to let go of the grief would meandisloyalty to Scott.

This is truly astory of a withering plant fighting to survive the drought and the budding of the flower that springs forth in God’s time. LIKE A WATERED GARDEN is loaded with emotion and imagery. You won’t want to miss Patti Hill’s debut novel. (12.99, 318 pages.)