Review: 'If every day is an awakening, you will never grow old. You will just keep growing.' --Gail Sheehy
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 4, 2014
Georgia born author Jonell Kirby Cash has degrees from Reinhardt Junior College and proceeded to gain a BS is Family and Consumer Sciences and a Masters in Education and graduated in 1949. Add to this institutional preparation the fact that she hails from a large supportive family and supports her life as a mother and grandmother and the reader gains an idea of how complete her perspective about love and family relationships and the arc of life has become.A RING, A DANCE, A SECOND CHANCE embraces a topic that is becoming more and more popular as the expected life span extends. Seniors make a large and ever-growing portion of our populace. Films (Quartet, Amour, The Bridges of Madison County, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Away From Her, etc) are taking this into consideration but too few writers address the possibility of finding love in the lives of senior citizens. But that is precisely what Jonell Kirby Cash offers in this very touching story about two high school sweethearts - Katie Allgood and Taylor Floyd - are separated by time and events and eventually come together after fifty years of changes in their separate lives. Katie is now Katie Wheatley, a widow attempting (actually quite successfully) to be independent and have a groups of new friends, getting on with life after the death of her spouse. Taylor is also a widower, rather unchanged by the passage of time except for the physical aspects of aging, makes contact with Katie by telephone and these now disparate people reach for the core of that moment in high school when love was new and unsorted and manage to apply the patina of the passing years into a relationship with far more meaning than they would have expected.Cash's character development is secure - we feel as though we have traveled this age trip with Katie and Taylor - and she understands the underpinnings of family relationships, the prejudices about older people seeking partnership, and the sense of renewal that comes with regenerating a long past love. She provides an empowering sense of compassion and hope for seniors who fail to realize that love is not only the young. A sweet story well told. Grady Harp, June 14