Reader's Digest Condensed Books 1982 v05: Jane's House / China: Alive in the Bitter Sea / Promises / Outrage

"It's such a simple thing. All you have to do is remember in the morning to take something out to defrost. Providing you remembered to shop for meat sometime, and then wrapped it in aluminum foil and put on a legible label so that when you went fishing in the frost-clouded freezer at eight in the morning you could actually tell what was in there."

For widower Paul Klein, raising two children on his own after his wife Jane's death is incredibly difficult. It's forgetting the little things that is perhaps the hardest part of losing Jane in Paul's mind. Remembering to take food out of the freezer in time for dinner, making sure that sixteen-year-old Hilary and ten-year-old Bobby had clean clothes to wear for school - these were the type of show more nagging little chores that Jane always took care of so efficiently.

Jane. Beautiful, perfect Jane, whose memory was still very much alive in the big old Victorian-era style house in Brooklyn; as much as her memory continues to live on in the hearts of her husband and children.

And that was part of the problem. In fact, that was exactly the problem. For in time a new woman named Ruth would enter their lives, filling the house with love and laughter once more. The question was, could there ever be room for another woman - living in Jane's house? Her family were bound to her memory by love. And it was only love that could eventually set them free.

I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I have always enjoyed reading about families in turmoil, and how they learn to overcome their various personal tragedies. I also thought that this was a well-written and well-developed story - poignant, realistic and entirely believeable to me. Actually, I'm so glad to have read this book when I did and I give it an A+! Robert Kimmel Smith is predominantly known as an author of children's books, although Jane's House is an adult book. show less