Anne D. LeClaire, The Lavender Hour

The Lavender Hour

Anne D. LeClaire

Ballantine, Apr 2007, $13.95

ISBN: 0345460480

Having passed the mystical five-year mark of surviving cancer, but recently losing her Virginia teaching position and with no male attachments, thirty-two-year-old Jessie Long feels a need to start over. Ironically, as she draws that conclusion the radio plays her life record with the other sex, Johnny Lee's oldie "Lookin for Love in All the Wrong Places." Jessie decides to move into the lavender-smelling vacant family-owned cottage on Cape Cod.

Jessie volunteers to work at a local hospice, but conceals her cancer history from everyone. She is assigned to assist dying forty-five-year-old fisherman Luke Ryder. As they spend his last moments together, they fall in love. When the pancreatic cancer becomes too painful, she assists him with an overdose of pills. Not given time to mourn her loss, Jessie stands trial for murder as assisted suicide in Massachusetts is against the law and Luke's acrimonious daughter Paige, jealous of the intruder's time with her dad, especially at the end, wants her hung.

This is an interesting character study that transcends the grieving process by looking at the complete person that Jessie is. Her decisions to abet Luke are not easy life and death choices though that it is black and white as far as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. No pampering to the right to die with dignity crowd or to thou shall live regardless of the quality of life commandment crew. Instead readers obtain a discerning look at loving another human enough to sacrifice your own well-being by assisting them with something that goes against your very need of more time with them.

Harriet Klausner