A Promise in Pieces by Emily Wierenga

I received this book in exchange for my review. The following post contains some advertisement.

Quilts of Love Series

After the end of World War II, Clara Kirkpatrick returns from the Women’s Army Corp to deliver a dying soldier’s last wishes: convey his love to his young widow, Mattie, with apologies for the missed life they had planned to share.

Struggling with her own post-war trauma, Clara thinks she’s not prepared to handle the grief of this broken family. Yet upon meeting Mattie, and receiving a baby quilt that will never cuddle the soldier’s baby, Clara vows to honor the sacrifices that family made.

Now a labor and delivery nurse in her rural hometown, Clara wraps each new babe in the gifted quilt and later stitches the child’s name into the cloth. As each new child is welcomed by the quilt, Clara begins to wonder whatever happened to Mattie—and if her own life would ever experience the love of a newborn. Little does she know that she will have the opportunity to re-gift the special quilt—years later and carrying even greater significance than when it was first bestowed.

This book is available through Amazon,  Deeper Shopping, B&N,  and other retailers.

About the Author:

Emily Wierenga comes from a home-schooling heritage. She is the eldest of four.

She  loves to travel. When she was young, she lived in Africa along with her parents who were missionaries.

She's been married to husband, Trenton,  nine and a half years, and has two beautiful boys, along with a couple foster children. They live in rural Alberta, where they snowboard, make wine and go geocaching.

When she's not writing or speaking, she plays guitar, and paints. You can read more about her on her blog HERE

I was blessed with this book courtesy of TBCN in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

My Thoughts:

A PROMISE IN PIECES  is written as conversation a grandmother is having with her grandson while they are on traveling. She tells him about her life growing up, in the army as a nurse and what happened after. There are intervals as they stop to rest, eat, and sleep, then the story resumes.  Clara's story is also about Jesus, love, grace and forgiveness; and about forgiving others as well as yourself.  Her grandson is a wise boy and gleans from his grandmother's tale.  
The book is short and sweet, a weekend read.  As you read, you feel like you get to know the characters, like you could even be a part of their family. Its relaxing and yet, you want to keep reading to find out what happened to Clara. This paragraph in the book "Oliver was doing really well at his job, so well, in fact, that we were lacking nothing, and this, I felt indicated a problem. Because we had not reason to need God anymore" really spoke volumes to me.  Because although we are not necessarily "rich" in material possessions we are blessed, so blessed in fact that it is easy to become ungrateful and our mundane life is kind of just that mundane and pointless. I think this book is also a challenge to be all you can be for God, use your talents, your resources and whatever else you have to work for Him. That is true fulfillment in life. There are a few unexpected turns to the story and the ending is quite bittersweet, but  I would highly recommend this book. The author did a great job, and I left inspired and moved to continue working on becoming all that God wants me to be.