One Summer

David Baldacci

Nicholas Sparks, Richard Paul Evans, Erich Segal, Nicholas Evans, David Baldacci...

Excuse me? The first authors write feel good stories with uplifting endings. Baldacci writes fast paced thrillers, like The Camel Club or Split Second. Occasionally, though, he changes his pace. When he does, it produces something wonderful like One Summer.

It's almost Christmas, Jack Armstrong has an incurable disease and only days left to live. He has promised his wife Lizzie he will live long enough to watch their three children enjoy their Christmas morning. On Christmas Eve, the unthinkable happens - Lizzie dies in an automobile crash on the icy Ohio streets.

Jack lives through her funeral, then has to go to hospice. Mikki, his 15-year-old daughter, goes to live with his mother-in-law, Bonnie. His two sons, Cory, his 12-year-old son, and Jack, his two-year-old son each go to live with one of Lizzie's sisters. All are now across country, too far to visit. Jack lays alone in hospice day after day, waiting to die.

One day he starts having breathing. He knows this is it. But then he realizes his oxygen had been cut off. It had been off for a while. For the first time in months, Jack is breathing on his own. Over the next few months Jack does the impossible. His incurable disease disappears. He starts therapy to get his strength and his health back. He is discharged. He goes out West and picks up his children from their different new homes. Then he decides to take his children to South Carolina. Lizzie had planned to take the children there to her old home place that summer after Jack was gone. He takes them now instead.

Jack has always let Lizzie take care of the kids in the past. He was in Afghanistan during their early marriage, then when he came home was always busy with construction jobs to pay the bills. Now he has to care for the children, including sullen, rebellious Mikki, find work, and wrestle with Lizzie's memories of her childhood home. It's going to be a difficult summer.

One Summer tugs all the right emotions and responses. Jack doesn't suddenly become the perfect father. Mikki doesn't turn around and accept her dad back after emotionally running away during his illness. His mother-in-law Bonnie doesn't accept that he can care for a family without Lizzie. All of them are still coming to terms with Lizzie's death. Baldacci brings the right tone and spin on all the different actions and reactions.

The reader can identify with Jack even if s/he has never experienced this type of loss. Mikki turns around slowly, like a typical teen ager. At times towards the end she's almost too good, but then Baldacci puts her back into being a normal American teen. Unfortunately the two boys are a small part of the story. They're important, but not the focus of the relationships in One Summer.

I admit, a well written book can make me cry. One Summer has many passages I had to re-read after I cleared the tears from my eyes. Feel good schmaltz? Sure. Good book? Absolutely.