Review: `When the going gets tough, the tough get going'
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 9, 2014
Canadian author Wendiann Proteau launches her first major novel with the publication of AND WHEN though she is far from a beginner author. Looking at her life, really examining it, gave her insights she proceeded to share with a series of seven volumes of self reflective workbooks whose aim was to provide aid to those who like her have reason to question purpose in life - and how to find it. From her notes associated with that series she writes, `Blessed with three siblings and parents who supported my hopes, I was raised in a small Canadian town, in an average middle-class family. I've married, divorced, dated, loved, lost, struggled, worked, succeeded and failed. I really am an everyday type of person. Single at age forty-something, I'm still figuring life out daily. I would define myself as being analytical, a realist and a dreamer, so you can only imagine the confusion that goes on sometimes. The dreamer starts to write fiction thinking of the happily ever after, but then while editing the realist comes out. My analytical side comes from being a go-to person over the years so I've learned to see things from many angles, knowing that circumstances affect us all individually. To be honest, I'd never written more than a grocery list until 2009. It came out of nowhere as I sat at my computer one night following an idea. The `Sit N Do Nothing Hamster Series' is my attempt to bring us all a little closer in this technological world. Using humor, comparison, and pull-quotes, the workbooks of self-discovery are a way to share tidbits of who we are, in the here and now. We are all an accumulation of every moment from birth until now and it's important to share that. The story continues to place difficult hurdles, forcing the characters to veer from their chosen paths. All in all, my life would be nothing without the people who have touched my soul. Friends, family, co-workers, relatives...have all been there through the good and bad. Everything takes hard work and nothing ever comes easy. Well at least not in my life. I firmly believe that karma plays an important role and that it brings us the people we are meant to meet, challenges we have to overcome, lessons we need to learn, and dreams we are meant to reach for.'  That excerpt tells us more about the plot of AND WHEN than any summary.Displaced form her living situation and taking on a home of her own, Jade Prency is a 40-something big woman, Amazonian and imperfect, and she relies on humor and her ability to help others to find her place in the world, believing tomorrow would always come. Two words invade to twist her world: illness becomes her personal battle and grief is a process her soul must endure. Feeling separate and alone, she searches for a new way to cope. Losing her beloved father to lung cancer, her grandmother dies, and Jade is discovered to have thyroid tumors in her neck that exasperate her because of delayed diagnoses. Her family is supportive and she is the bulwark of keeping her family going. Ultimately she turns to the Internet -the new best friend sources in websites and chatrooms - for a caring friend and in time she `meets' Brady, a charmer from Virginia with secrets of his own. The slow development of their relationship and the subsequent results provides the `journey' of the title. An example of her prose `on-line,' Brady responds to Jade - `You haven't told me too much, never will, Hon.  I have seen that it's easier to talk to some complete stranger now-a-days than someone who you know.  This world has changed so much that sometimes I don't know if I still exist in it.  It seems that people are not much into communicating with each other one-on-one rather than text or email.  Hope your day at work goes well, that you go to and from, safely.  Thanks for emailing back, wish I could be there to meet you when you get home; would be so very nice to have someone warm, caring and captivating around.  Imagine what you want, but I see it clearly in my eyes. *Long deep kiss* Brady Xoxoxo'For a first novel Wendiann Proteau writes with confidence and a rich sense of realism couple with a style that completely matches her subject. After a chapter we know her character and grow along with her. As she states, I wrote And When to help people.  I think we all struggle.  Life is never fair or easy, but each journey we take, every path we choose can lead to something unexpected.' She has accomplished her mission. This book may fall into the category of `chick lit' for most, but there is sufficient compassion that pours out of her pages that should attract men also. `I think we all struggle' she says, and that `all' is the defining word. Grady Harp, March 14