FIGHTING SPIRIT
What do you do when tragedy and revelations of adultery shatter your assumptions about the person you loved the most? Kitty Munro’s world is cruelly upended when her husband Tom dies in a car accident, leaving her alone to raise their two young children. Just when things couldn’t get any worse, she’s dealt a second emotional hammer blow after discovering he was having an affair with his brother’s wife! Can she forgive Tom’s treachery, and find a new beginning in the pretty English village where he relocated his family before his death?
Redemption in Eden is a novel that covers its observations about the human condition in a genteel wrap of quaintness. Tragedy and the consequences of deceit are played out against the backdrop of a pretty as a postcard English village (Eden Bridge), where there’s a passion amongst the locals for knowing other people’s business. That’s not to say Kitty’s plight isn’t treated with compassion. Widows with young children will always get support and Kitty ticks all the right boxes for sympathy. Finding a place in the world after a king-sized trauma is hard, especially when the source of that unhappiness is a dead husband who was also a heartless love rat!
Kitty overcomes the odds to find stability and a sense of purpose thanks in no small part to a valuable piece of Delft pottery (which she sells for a decent profit), supportive friends, a stranger squatting in her garden bothy, and giving a home to an abandoned donkey.
Maybe the point of this novel is to show how the human spirit is capable of bouncing back from tragedy through simple acts of giving and the kindness of others. There’s nothing profound in that observation as it’s a familiar literary theme that will never stop inspiring variations. Having said that Redemption in Eden is a straightforward, easy read that doesn’t pretend to be spectacular.
If you like your stories uncomplicated, with hints of a Joanna Trollope Cotswold drama, and characters with recognisable personalities, then this book is definitely worth reading.
Reviewed by Juliette Foster
