Posted in Reading in the Burg. By Mary Ann Zehr. Ellen, a longtime school bus driver, and Gary, a retired bank teller, have each lost a spouse through divorce, and a woman named Susan has set them up for a first date.
The novel has a cast of seven main characters who become increasingly connected. The town is somewhere in the Midwest, and it has frigid winter days and summer heat waves. Some of the people from my childhoodβi. As a small-town girl at heart, I feel at home in the novel.
Virtually absent in the town are gourmet foods, brand names, and luxury goods. Most of the characters tell only small lies, but one character is a habitual liar. The characters are flawed, and their flaws are believableβwhat we recognize in others and ourselves. Kauffman reveals who her characters are at a fast clip with carefully selected details that suggest she has an exceptional ability to read humans. Not far into the novel, I found myself caring about the characters.
We learn that Ellen has a tendency to imagine events so far in advance that as soon as one Christmas season has ended, she envisions who will gather around her dinner table during the next one. The unremarkable seven characters become engaged in remarkable moments tied to the birth of a child.
The child is anticipated, born, attended to, and loved. This happens over the course of one yearββframed by two Christmas seasons. The parents, grandparents, and others in their orbit who anticipate and interact with the newborn child are transformedβsome slightly and some significantly.
