Lawana Blackwell, A Table by the Window

Lawana Blackwell, A Table by the Window - In San Francisco, twenty-five-year-old Carley Reed, an English literature teacher at the Emerson Preparatory School, catches four of her students plagiarizing. Her boss wants her to drop it because the grandfather of one of the pupils is the school's top donor. That night, private investigator Dennis Wingate informs Carley that her grandmother Cordelia Walker passed away three months ago. Carley is sad, feeling all alone and wishing she had met the woman, but her late mother insured that never happened. Shockingly, Carley learns she inherited a home in Tallulah, Mississippi.

Angry with the school's cavalier treatment of cheating in which they try to make her feel guilty, Carley resigns from the school and heads south. In Mississippi, she meets her Great Aunt and other relatives who she never knew existed. Carley also wants to help heal a new friend, who is still grieving from a hit and run death of a loved one that happened six years ago and never was solved. However, an unknown person pressures her to back away from the Gweneth Brown vehicular homicide.

This is an inspiring tale that focuses on the human need for nurturing, belonging and actualization from friends and family, something that Carley never received from her mom or anyone else until she came to Tallulah. The hit-and-run mystery adds suspense that Lawana Blackwell blends nicely into the prime theme, but also takes away from Carley's efforts to adapt to a reengineered world in which people care about her and if she can learn to accept that she would never be alone again. Ms. Blackwell provides a deep, character-driven novel on the importance of being loved.

Bethany House, Apr 2005, $12.99, 400 pp.

ISBN: 0764280775

Harriet Klausner