WHAT IS EDEN AND WHERE CAN WE FIND IT, we sometimes ask. A place of creation for some. A place of rest for others. And yet Eden is the garden that we lost because of the choices we made long ago. We were cast out, and we cannot return though we ever yearn to be there in the cool of the evening when the first stars appear.
Rowen is there at the beginning, of course, when he first meets Eden—a young girl who must testify of extraordinary and violent crimes she witnessed that rocked the small town of White Rock, North Carolina. She’s a wisp of a thing, the kind of girl you’d pay no attention to, but she becomes the focus of a rapt community when she must tell what she saw—and her words will rip the world apart, not just hers and her family, but also of the people around her. Her truth is inconvenient and troublesome, and she suffers by it. She is cast out of paradise and, like Eve, becomes homeless.
Rowen and his family take her in, and she grows up, twisting and turning, never quite the right girl for Rowen but always the one he wants. He’s challenged to do more than be a small-town boy, but he stays at home, marries an appropriate choice and carries out an appropriate life—but still it is Eden who is on his mind, in his eyes, and carried in his heart until—well, you’ll need to read the book to find out whether Rowen ever returns to Eden.
I received this book to review, with the promise I’d give my honest feedback. This book fascinated me not only with the lives of the intertwined souls of White Rock but also with the emotional depth of these characters. They ring true in their convictions even though they are shot through with flaws and misunderstandings and the things that we all carry because we don’t know how to lay them down. I felt connected to them, was saddened at how the vagaries of life could damage and wound an innocent soul or even further mar a fallen one, and I was reminded of how much we want to be filled with joy in the smallest choices of life. For it is our own selves who are found outside Eden, and we, too, would return there.
NOTE TO READERS: This book contains uses of historically contextualized language of the South in the 1950s.
EDEN
Jamie Lisa Forbes
294 pages
Pronghorn Press
ISBN# 978-1-941052-37-2 Trade Paper
ISBN# 978-1-941052-38-9 Ebook
Thanks so much for the powerful review. I cannot put in words how much I loved this book. The characters will stay with me for a long time.