Amanda Cox became one of my favorite authors with The Edge of Belonging, and I am excited to say that The Secret Keepers of Old Depot Grocery lived up to my expectations.

Tropes: complicated family dynamics, 2 widowed main characters, arranged marriage, unwed mother, love letters from decades past (yes, I'm calling this a trope now)

Content: remembering murder of father (semi-detailed, focuses mostly on emotion)

5 Stars ( )

This was a great book! I really enjoyed getting to know the characters and the storyline kept me guessing until the end.
Sarah returns home after her husband dies. She wants to make her dream of running the family store a reality. When she gets home her mother, Rosemary announces that the store is going to be closed for good. She also finds out that she's pregnant. Back to 1965- Glory Ann finds herself pregnant and her fiance, Jimmy is pronounced dead in Vietnam. Her father finds her a man willing to marry her and Glory Ann does for the sake of her child. She doesn't truly open her heart to Clarence until she sees his unconditional love for Rosemary. Present day- Rosemary has many secrets and they're making her bitter. She hid a letter from a man named Jimmy from her mother. It turns out that Jimmy did not die in Vietnam and still loves Glory Ann. Rosemary had never given the letter to Glory Ann because she thought her mother was having an affair. Unfortunately, it kept her from getting to know her biological father. Jimmy slowly eases into the family's life and he and Glory Ann get married. Sarah has her baby and is in a relationship with a local farmer, Clay. ( )

When starting to read this book, I thought the plot would be secrets kept, secrets uncovered, people mad, people reunite. This story is so much more. The characters grew and their stories unfolded as you continued reading. Nothing was as simple as I first expected. I enjoyed the storytelling alternating from present to Glory Ann's story. ( )

People keep secrets all the time. Some times they do it because it's not their secret and it might harm the person whose secret it is if it became public. That's a good reason to keep a secret; it's what we expect of lawyers and priests and ministers and therapists. But there are times when secrets need to be revealed especially if keeping a secret means someone else is affected. This is a story about secrets between mothers and daughters that finally came out but really should have been told much sooner.

Sarah's husband died in an accident just as she was convinced she should leave the marriage. So instead of grieving (or perhaps in addition to grieving) she is feeling a tremendous amount of guilt. She decides to leave her large home in Chicago and return to her small home town in Tennessee where her mother and her grandmother operate a grocery store. She really just wants to move back permanently and help run the store but the store is going through hard times and her mother, Rosemary, wants the store to be sold. The economic reason isn't the only reason Rosemary has for selling the store. She has been diagnosed with MS and knows she won't be able to manage running the store for much longer. But that's a secret she is keeping from both her mother and her daughter. Her mother, Glory Ann, has a secret going back to before Rosemary was born. Her teenage boyfriend, Jimmy, was drafted to go to Vietnam and was killed there. Glory Ann was carrying his child and when her parents found out they forced her into a marriage with Clarence who had started the store. Clarence knew about Jimmy and the baby but neither he nor Glory Ann ever told Rosemary. All these secrets will come out eventually and the women will find peace and love.

For a book from Revell which specializes in Christian fiction this wasn't too preachy but it's more romance than I really like. ( )

A heartwarming story centered around a grocery store and the family that owns it. There is Sarah - the youngest who returns to the family homestead after a tragedy, holding tight to her own secrets. The oldest is Glory Ann, Sarah's grandmother who also loves the Old Depot Grocery store that she has worked in most of her life. Glory Ann and Sarah want to save the store, but Glory Ann's daughter Rosemary has other ideas - and secrets of her own. The reader also gets to see into Glory Ann's past and find out what brought her to the Old Depot Grocery Store - and to her husband Clarence - in the first place. This family is threatened by the secrets it keeps, but as the women work and live together they gradually learn that family is still family, even when you open up to them and share the secrets that you think will be hurtful.
I greatly enjoyed this story of generations of women learning to open up to one another, I definitely recommend it to readers seeking thoughtful and heartwarming Christian fiction. ( )