Daddy (1989)

Really sad story with a happy ending in true Danielle Steel style

Oliver Watson has worked hard to build a safe, predictable world. But suddenly it seems to dissolve around him. The marriage he thought was perfect crumbles after eighteen years. His mother is killed in an untimely accident, leaving his father newly widowed and trying, at seventy-two, to build a new world for himself. Oliver's eldest son rejects him and reaches out towards a life of his own, a life he is not mature enough to handle. Melissa, his daughter, unequivocably blames her father for her mother's desertion, while Sam, the 'baby', is too shaken to deal with it at all. ( )

The perfect life - the job, the wife, the house, the kids, the loving parents - Oliver Watson had settled into a life that was exactly what he wanted till the day his wife decided to return to school without any of them. Now Oliver had to be the sole source of income for the family, the supportive son to a mother with Alzheimer’s, the single parent to all of his kids and deal with the loss of his partner and friend of about 20 years. Learning to respond as both parents was a test for this new single father and deciding where the family should go from there now fell on him alone.

A tender and heartwarming story, as many of Danielle Steele’s are, it was written as a modern enough story that it is still possible, actually probable in today’s life, very realistic. The connections between father and kids was the best for me. The moment of realization, for any parent really, that makes you say to yourself, ’I did ok’ is all that any of us can ask for. While the romance was encouraging, it was standard, the family dynamics of this story is what sets it apart. ( )

Oliver Watson works to build what he thinks is a perfect life but after 18 years of marriage his wife leaves him and deserted him and their two children and he is left to go on raising the two children he loves ( )

One of my favorite DS novels ... I have the hardback and won't get rid of it. Great for when I need a good cry! ( )