Big News at Our House - Treats for Everyone!

Abby lab here - Mom is still bouncing off the walls this morning so I will have to post. Some of you know that in 2015 The Book of Barkley won the Reader's Favorite International Book Award Silver Medal for Non-Fiction. That's a HUGE award, supported by Publishers clearing house and one that has thousands and thousands of entrants each year, including many from the huge publishing houses like Random House, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster. Previous winners include J.A. Jance, James Rollins and New York Times best selling author Daniel Silva. The finalists get their awards at the Miami International Book fair and there are all kinds of prizes.

Her second book she forgot to enter cuz she was busy taking care of her Dad through some surgery, but she entered her third book, figuring lightning never strikes twice but it was worth the try. So yesterday when she was notified Small Town Roads won GOLD in Fiction (Religious Theme) for the 2017 Awards she Squeed like I'd never heard her, then called Dad, then praised Jesus, then Squeed some more.

Here is the publisher's description of the book:

Let go of the life you wanted to get the one that you were meant for. 

With a recent college degree in Criminal Justice and big future dreams, rookie Law Enforcement Officer Rachel Raines is looking for a temporary place to hide a heart full of loss and a quieter police patrol than Chicago. The bequest of her late aunt's house out in rural Illinois seems like the perfect opportunity for both if she can survive the gigantic spiders, creaky plumbing, and inevitable challenges of being the rookie on a small town force.  It's a place unlike any she has lived in - a tiny town with no coffee baristas, no night life, and one single restaurant that has a giant cow perched on the roof. It was not the life she had expected.

 Sometimes God has other plans for us.

Down the street, her aunt's best friend, Evelyn Ahlgren, marks the passing of seasons and neighbors, long mired in her loneliness as a widow. When the young woman with scars of her own befriends her, they strike up an unlikely friendship across generations that just might help them both heal with a little help from heaven above. 

Written in both third person (Evelyn's view of life) and first person (Rachel keeping an online journal to track the events of each new day), words both humorous and breathtakingly lyrical, as these two vastly different generations bond, Small Town Roads is a beautifully told, heartwarming story.  It is not just a story of life in rural America, it is finding the best in people, including ourselves, in the most unlikely of places.

I think several glasses of wine were drunk to celebrate and there was a lot of laughing last night but she and Dad are both smiling this morning.

It couldn't be a "Mom" book without a dog in the storyline, this one a rescue lab mix named Clyde. - I definitely approve.  Abby Lab