Here it was several weeks into January and I still had not read a book this year..i was craving a good read. I remembered a post on facebook from my friend Donna D (our friendship began in our post-married, pre-baby days of living in Dallas) and her status was something like curled up on these cold days with a good book. when i questioned what she was reading lately, she replied, she loved the historical fictions by Lynn Austin. Our school's library had one Lynn Austin book on the shelf, so that made the choice easy :) and without even reading the back cover of the book, i delved into the life of Louise, a newly married woman living in pre-world war one Germany. pages turned easy as the story took you forward and backward over an eighty plus year span into the life of 4 generations of woman, all with choices to make. The preface was from Exodus 20:5 ...I lay the sins of the parents upon their children; the entire family is affected—even children in the third and fourth generations of those who reject me....so that was a clue that not all these choices were easy or good ones.
Getting involved with the lives of Louise, her daughter Emma, her daughter Grace and her daughter Suzanne (who also had two daughters) continues to cause me to ponder who am i in this chain of generational daughters... daughters that go back to the first woman Eve...how did the choices of the daughters before me effect me and what are the effects of my choices on the daughters that come after me....Needless to say, I enjoyed the book and toward the end found myself reading until after 3:00 am (what was I thinking having coffee before bed?). Thank you, Donna, for helping me to start out new year 2011 with good perspective from a well written story.
Eve's Daughters
author: Lynn Austin
paperback; 428 pages
1999
