Review: A Good Story of Grief, Death, Life and Love
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 10, 2013
This is a most unusual book. Hand-Me-Down Love is such an apt title for this book.A sister gets a brain tumor. After a valiant fight... she is gone ... after asking her sister to watch out for her husband who will need help to cope after her death.The husband just can't deal with their home and he moves to another city and rents a condo. The sister and her brother-in-law keep in touch by text and the occasional phone call. He gets totally drunk and calls the sister, Marla, for help. She picks him up from a bar and takes him home. The next morning Sean says he can't stay in the condo any more, that he needs to be around people somehow. Marla offers to let him stay in her spare bedroom.Later, she helps him close up and empty the condo. Then, he says he wants to sell the house he and her sister owned, so Marla, once again, does all the work and packs up everything to be stored and also, lists the house. Since it's a desirable house in a great location, it sell and closes within 3 weeks!Marla keeps working in her antique and vintage shop while all this is going on. She's having trouble dealing with her grief over losing her sister and familiarity of living with Sean is starting to lead to attraction. Both of them are feeling it and also feeling guilty.After acting on their feelings, Sean realizes he needs to go away to sort out his heart and his grief. He hikes part of the Appalachian Trail and then takes a break and works for several months for a lumber company right off the Trail that sometimes hires hikers.Marla, meanwhile, goes back into a routine of visiting with her parents on the weekends. She also goes to a grief counselor. And an old boyfriend comes back into her life and they start seeing each other, a lot.Marla's sister, Meredith's, 1 year anniversary of her death is coming up and Marla can't remember how her sister taught her to cook gumbo and Marla wants to make Meredith's perfect gumbo to celebrate Meredith.Marla goes through all the boxed up books until she finds the recipe and also, her sister's diary. After reading the diary, Marla realizes that Meredith wouldn't be upset with her if she fell in love with Sean while taking care of him. She's going to have to break up with the fellow she's been seeing because she realizes she really does love Sean.Meanwhile, Sean hasn't been heard from for a long time and no one knows when or if he'll ever come back to town.