Brenda Knight Graham

That know-it-all man! That infuriating, egotistical man! Why did I have the rotten luck to fall in love with someone I don't even like?

Although her particular batch of students comes with quite a set of challenges, Connie is determined to teach these children to read. But the school's principal, Maury, has problems with Connie's methods in On Wings of Song by author Brenda Knight Graham.

I first read this novel maybe over a decade ago, and it's got a mash-up of themes going on. Teaching, troubled kids, foster care. Tragedy, singing hymns, skydiving. Though Maury is rather uncommunicative through parts of the book (probably one crucial part too many), Connie's not a woman who'll always take any bone he tosses her way. The book has good messages about doing what we're meant for and what happens if one's cause—for people, supposedly—becomes more important than the people themselves.

While the story has a couple of references to (nearly) being in the twenty-first century, the style sometimes has a rather old-fashioned feel, in a Grace-Livingston-Hill-era kind of way. As characters would "cheerily" say this and "merrily" do that, and Maury would say, "Oh, dear," I almost expected someone to do something "gaily." The story's flow and timing is awkward in places, and the use of exclamation points is a little excessive at times, particularly when they come from the narrator.

Nevertheless, this is an easy and fairly quick read for fans of Christian romance.… (more)