my take: Oh, I do love is kind of book…for every season and an especially great vacation read: an engaging plot line, a colorful cast of characters, a page-turner and yet requires a bit of reflection, so you can look up at the ocean and palm trees. (Did I mention I read this in Puerto Rico?)

If you read and loved The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, you are in for a treat. If you haven’t read Harold Fry: go. do. that.  You are in for a double treat. This is the lovely companion to Harold’s story. In fact, now I want to go back and re-read to cross reference and see if I caught all the bits and clues Queenie reveals.

If you like the show Derek I think you will get a kick out of this as it’s set in a hospice home staffed with quirky nuns and the final stop for a delightful group of wacky patients.

Miss Queenie waits for Harold to arrive writing in a notebook all she did not tell him. Toward the end of her story she writes:

     “….All these years I thought a piece of me was missing. But it was there all along….It has been   everywhere, my happiness–when my mother sang a song for me to dance, when my father took my hand to keep me safe–but it was such a small, plain thing that I mistook it for something ordinary and failed to see. We expect our happiness to come with a sign and bells, but it doesn’t….”

Funny (I laughed), touching (I cried), and philosophical (I came away a better person).

my source: well-recommended by Daughter Anne and definitely worth the hardcover purchase at Schuler Books – if you are in West Michigan stop by to borrow.

my verdict: very good feel good read