Review: "Stay put, and I will always find you"
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 5, 2012
Two women in a Manhattan mansion on a rainy Saturday afternoon in 1986. To pass the time and try to engage her young great-granddaughter, Jeannie tells a story from her younger days. She told it like it was a true story, but Jeannie was a famous author of children's books, so maybe it was just a product of her vivid imagination. In any case, it was a fantastic story of a last-second rescue in desperate circumstances. Even if Jeannie believed the story, were supernatural powers involved, or was it all a dream?Jeannie's story was intended to encourage her great-granddaughter to shake off her own disillusionment with the world and get her life in gear. Maybe a scary ghost story would do it.I enjoyed the short story. The author tells a good tale with no words wasted, and his characters were well drawn, the kind it was easy to love--or hate.One historical footnote: The story takes place in the early part of the 20th century. Jeannie's brother Tommy had enlisted in the US Army when the United States entered World War I. He was killed in 1918 during the Second Battle of the Marne, where two American divisions joined with dozens of French divisions to hold the line in a massive German offensive, the last major offensive of the war. (Sorry, but I had to include that tidbit - I'm a military history buff.)