Things Remembered

Things Remembered by Georgia Bockoven
review copy provided by William Morrow
Description from Goodreads:
 To face the future, Returning to her childhood home in the golden hills of Northern California means regret and pain for Karla Esterbrook. Yet she can't refuse when her ailing grandmother, Anna, asks her to help settle her affairs. After all, Anna raised Karla and her younger sisters after their parents' death twenty years before. But from the beginning a powerful clash of wills separated Karla and her grandmother, leaving them both bitter and angry.

A woman must let go of the past

Little does Karla know that a very determined Anna will do everything in her power to bridge the chasm between them--including helping a charismatic veterinarian out to win her granddaughter for himself. But can the past he healed? For Karla, opening her heart could lead to more hurt...or to love and reconciliation--and a passion of which she'd only dreamed.

In the tradition of Barbara Delinksy comes this poignant, moving story of the bonds of family, the strength pf love, and the power of forgiveness.

My Take:

I enjoyed reading Things Remembered by Georgia Bockoven. It is a nice story about family and pain and forgiveness.  Karla is still working through many of her painful memories from childhood. She only half remembers some things and some of the things she remembers are memories of a child who had only a tiny part of the pertinent information. Many of her impressions of her family are from those vague memories of childhood understood with a child's capacity and often missing vital bits of information.  Instead of asking about certain events, Karla goes with her childhood memories and hurts and steels herself against further pain by closing herself off from her grandmother. 

This story is about family and all the ways we can perpetuate discord without even realizing it. I found it interesting how the characters seem to work against each other without seeming to notice what they are doing. I found many of the dynamics within the family - between the sisters especially -to be pretty true to life.  It seems like the family dynamic of your growing up years carries over into adulthood, despite best efforts to get past it. Once the sisters seem to all get on the same page about moving beyond certain mindsets and behaviors, things begin to work out better. I'm not sure I quite buy how quickly the youngest sister turned around, but I thought the book was a nice, heart-warming story that would be a great read around the holidays.