Karen White, Pieces of the Heart

Pieces of the Heart

Karen White

NAL, Apr 2006, $12.95, 288 pp.

ISBN: 0451217675

Thirty-one year old Atlanta accountant Caroline Collier has not lived, only existed in thirteen years since the death of her beloved younger brother Jude. She has the scar on her chest to remind her of what he donated to her when he died at the accident that almost killed her too. Now she is staying with her overbearing mother Margaret at the family vacation cottage at Lake Ophelia in the North Carolina mountains, while she recovers from recent panic attacks caused by stress on the job, and failures to gain closure from Jude's death and her father's desertion.

Next door is former attorney turned master furniture maker Drew Reed and his teenage daughter Jewel. His late wife Shelby Ann was actually Jude's significant other before the teen died. Jewel and her Granny Rainy begin to get Caroline to quilt and swim, while Drew finds himself attracted to the girl next door, who when she is not scowling is pretty. Though the trio and Margaret reach out to her, Caroline needs to let go of the past if she wants to live life to the fullest with people who love her.

This is a terrific insightful character study that focuses on several individuals struggling differently with the deaths of loved ones. Caroline who has not completed the five phases of grief is time-locked in the grieving stage, mostly because she was there, and in his death he saved her life. Her mother cannot stop fussing, while her father fled to the West Coast, and like Drew and an injured loon, reinvented his life. Granny turned to her granddaughter, and Jewel cherishes her late mother's diary as her survival mechanism. Fans of a deep poignant family drama will appreciate this powerful look at how people deal with the death of a loved one.