The Courage Tree

This may be my favorite book by Diane Chamberlain. Love the way she interweaves storylines! She always throws in a few curveballs to keep the reader on their toes and guessing. This one revolves around a sick little girl and a controversial medical treatment she is receiving. When the child goes missing things rapidly get complicated. We witness the strength and courage of her mom who simply refuses to give up hope.

When Janine’s 8-year old, Sophie, goes away to a camp with the other Brownies/Girl Scouts, it’s an adventure for her. Sophie is in end-stage renal failure, but has been feeling so much better on an alternative herbal mixture that is being tested. On the way home, she and another little girl are in a second vehicle with a younger leader. When their vehicle doesn’t return home, time is ticking on Sophie’s treatment. What happened? Janine and her ex-husband, Joe, are frantic to find Sophie!

This was really good. Another page-turner that kept me wanting to stay up late and read! Oh, Joe and Janine’s parents just made me want to smack them all, though. In addition to a couple other characters.

What a truly good book. Many issues in this story are issues that we all deal with on a daily basis--family relationships, chronic illness, compassion, love and forgiveness. The issue of a missing child with a chronic illness is a central theme of this story. The analogy of the Courage Tree is an interesting concept. This author has a wonderful way with words and portrays her characters so that the reader is just devouring her books. She uses twists and turns that the reader never expects to hold one's interest to the end. I would highly recommend this book.

I have read several of Diane Chamberlain's book and this one is not the page turner the other two were. It is quite slow moving. The story kept me engaged, but not staying up all night wondering how it was going to end.

For most of her 8 years of life, Sophie Donohue has been suffering from end stage kidney disease and she has spent countless hours hospitalized as new treatments are tried on her fragile body. Sophie's mother, Janine, who has already donated a kidney to her only child, which was rejected, learns from her parents' gardener about a new herbal remedy that has shown promising results. Janine agrees to enroll Sophie in the trials against the wishes of her ex-husband Joe as well as her own parents. The gardener, Lucas, has become close to Janine and Sophie and he supports her decision completely. After several months of the herbal treatment, Sophie is well enough to return to school and to even go on a weekend retreat with her girl scout show more troup. As Janine arrives at the drop off point to pick up Sophie after her trip she quickly learns that Sophie and another girl did not return in the van with the other girls but went with one of the younger camp counselors. After several hours the 3 are officially reported missing and Janine is frantic that Sophie is gone. The camp counselor's car is found the next day at the bottom of a steep ravine and the body of the adult and one child are found in the burned out wreckage. The child is not Sophie and now it is feared that the young girl has wandered into the deep West Virginia forest and is hopelessly lost. Janine believes her daughter is alive and will stop at nothing to find her.

This book started out so well and I thought I would enjoy it so much more than I did. There is a side story of an aging actress and her murderous daughter who are hiding out in the woods which is just a mess of a subplot. The rest of the book is just chock full of the most unbelievable coincidences that it nearly became laughable with each new twist. The suspense was fairly good so I'm comfortable rating it a 3. show less

Another terrific book by Chamberlain....the interwoven complexities of the relationships....whew! Really fascinating to see how Chamberlain worked out her very clever plot.

I took this book on vacation with me and I stayed up late three nights in a row to finish it. I thought this was a good book and it gave a nice perspective on how parenting can be hard when parents view situations differently.