Reviewer: Lori Graham
Title: The Barefoot Believers
Author: Annie Jones
Publisher: Steeple Hill
ISBN-13: 978-0-373-78603-9
Release Date: March 2008
Genre/Sub-genre: Contemporary Fiction
Year/Setting: Present Day, Primarily Florida
Overall Rating: 4.0
Sexual Content Rating: None
Language (Profanity/Slang) Rating: None
Violent Content Rating: None
Annie's Website: None found
Kate is trying to get her life on track. She has had some adventures in her life and had some difficulty figuring out exactly what she wants to do with her life. Now, though, she has finished medical school and has set up her own podiatry clinic. Her mother has come in and has a whole lot of opinions and thoughts – one of which is that she is going to move with her friends and they will soon be living in their old vacation home in Santa Sofia, Florida. As Kate is discussing things with her mother, the woman decides to take off and in the process runs over Kate’s foot with her car.
Given that she can’t work for awhile, Kate’s sister, Jo, decides they need to take a vacation and check the Florida home to see how things are going there. While Kate is reliving past adventures down there, Jo is looking at the house with an eye toward selling it. As a realtor, that is her business after all. When they arrive, they are trying to get into the property when Jo goes around back to see if she can get in that way. She ends up tripping and falling spraining her ankle in the process. Now we have two sisters, neither of which can walk, and there is no food in the house.
The good side of this is that it leaves a lot of time for the two women to talk about their lives including how their father just took off one day and took their other sister with him. Just about the time they think they’ll starve to death though, they think of the cottage caretaker and call Moxie. Moxie has lived there for years and loves the small town.
The Barefoot Believers takes these three women on a path they would have never anticipated.
Annie Jones does a fine job of creating some family dynamics in this manuscript. The further I read the more I understood where these girls came from and what they were feeling. There were some twists and turns that kept me guessing a bit but even more were the pulls on the emotions. I had to chuckle when Kate’s mother ran over her foot. I know it would hurt physically but the irony of a mother running over her podiatrist daughter’s foot…cute humor.
There is also the work of trying to reclaim the lost part of you that was taken by a father who left when you were a child and the confusion and pain it causes. There was also just a bit of romance thrown in as Kate comes face to face with a crush from long ago and Jo is introduced to a fine man, who just happens to be the local pastor.
The only downside to the book was with the number of characters involved I did feel a bit of shift each time the point of view switched. I would get going with Kate and we would move to Jo and so on. By the end of the book, they were all intertwined so it was no longer an issue but it did take just a bit to get the rhythm.
Lori
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