Review: Deeply engaging
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 16, 2013
Finally, an intelligently written women's fiction.Nancy Frederick has written something that has only enhanced my respect for the contemporary women's fiction genre. Her `Dawn Any Minute' is uncompromising in its literary elegance, while taking care to keep you enthralled with every page. It is a deeply satisfying tale that will emotionally resonate with readers who want something more than just cheap thrills from their reading.`Dawn Any Minute' is about Alice. She's almost burned out, what with everything that is going on in her life, most of them not really good. Running a children's party restaurant, she juggles her duties as a restaurateur and as mother to 22-year-old Skye, but she's failing at this. Or at least, that's what she feels most of the time. Her current relationship feels like scratching a blackboard with your nails, and Skye, her daughter, isn't exactly the picture-perfect doting young woman Alice wishes her to be. Everything seems hopelessly downhill until that cooking show that, like Gordon Ramsay's `Kitchen Nightmares', spills some light into her life in the form of a man who may finally be her ticket to happiness. But saddled with unpleasant memories of her past, embroiled with the vicissitudes of her present, and utterly confused about the sudden appearance of various choices, Alice is not exactly "carefree" when it comes to making a life-changing decision. And while she resolves the frayed threads of her life, she discovers things about herself she never knew were always there, just waiting to be unravelled.Essentially, `Dawn Any Minute' can be considered a "coming of age" tale for the forty-something. It is one of those books that stays with you and haunts you long after you've finished reading it. Nancy Frederick seems single-handedly upping the ante with women's fiction--her story has that literary grace and quality about it that reminds me of, say, `The Heart is a Lonely Hunter' or `Sophie's Choice'. The author obviously does not compromise--she either writes her books to the highest quality, or not write anything at all. Fans of the genre will not only love this, but will cherish it and read and reread it. I cannot recommend this too highly--order a copy of `Dawn Any Minute', find a nice comfy spot to sit back and relax, and enjoy the journey. And I promise it is a journey you will happily take and retake. I highly recommend!