Georgia Bockoven If I’d Never Known Your Love

If I'd Never Known Your Love

Georgia Bockoven

Harlequin Everlasting, Apr 2007, $5.25

ISBN: 0373654073

Sacramento based designer Julia McDonald becomes concerned for no reason re her husband's sudden business trip to Columbia when he replaces a peer who cannot make it. She soon learns that paranoia can be real when Evan is abducted. Julia makes every effort to recover her spouse safely, but though she meets the demands of the kidnappers, he never comes home.

Five years later, Julia focuses on her two children, Shelley and Jason, still traumatized by what happened to their father. Though they have finally had his body returned to them and buried him they each pray everyday to turn back the hands of time before he left for South America. Julia's catharsis is a letter she writes of her life with her beloved before the serpents destroyed their personal Eden.

This is an interesting family drama that initially focuses on the impact of a lack of closure has on a spouse and offspring, but deftly moves into grief for a beloved one. Julia and her children cannot fully move on because they still have a fiber of hope that Evan is alive and will come home to them soon until his corpse is returned to them. The three surviving MacDonalds struggle with their loss as each grieves and copes differently wondering what they could have done differently to inform the patriarch how much they love him; in the end that is the key message to tell your loved ones how much you love them.