My review of The Widow of Saunders Creek by Tracey Bateman

About the book: 

A grief that knows no boundary.
A love without any limit.
A need that doesn’t end at death.

Corrie Saunders grew up in a life of privilege. But she gave it all up for Jarrod, her Army husband, a man she knew was a hero when she vowed to spend her life with him. She just didn’t expect her hero to sacrifice his life taking on an Iraqi suicide bomber.

Six months after Jarrod’s death, Corrie retreats to the family home her husband inherited deep in the Missouri Ozarks. She doesn’t know how to live without Jarrod—she doesn’t want to. By moving to Saunders Creek and living in a house beloved by him, she hopes that somehow her Jarrod will come back to her.

Something about the house suggests maybe he has. Corrie begins to wonder if she can feel Jarrod’s presence.

Jarrod’s cousin Eli is helping Corrie with the house’s restoration and he knows that his dead cousin is not what Corrie senses. Eli, as a believing man and at odds with his mystically-oriented family members, thinks friendly visits from beyond are hogwash.  But he takes spirits with dark intentions seriously. Can he convince Corrie that letting go of Jarrod will lead to finding her footing again— and to the One she can truly put her faith into?

My review:

Well this is a favorite for me this year. I didn't want to do anything but read this book. The love story was tender and the mystery of the house was downright creepy. The thing I liked about this story were the spiritual elements because there was truth in what the characters said. You can't dabble with spirits. There are no such things as good spirits, but only demons cloaked in whatever you want them to be so they can get close. That gave me the shivers. Anyway, there were a lot of good nuggets in the spiritual thread of the book.

I also appreciated the theme of grief and loss and all of the points the author brought out in the process of showing it. I loved how you were in the heroine's head and coping as if you were the person grieving. There were a number of times when I got teary myself. Like when she visited her deceased husband's parents, and when she painted the surprise at the camp. The emotion expressed in the story was deep and believable.

Of course, my favorite character was the hero, though the heroine was very likable as well. The hero cared about others to the point where he'd set his own needs aside at times. I loved how he sometimes felt selfish himself because of his feelings for the heroine. I also loved how honest he was in his thoughts regarding his attraction to her. But the best part about him was that he loved deeply and that he was so tenderhearted. The fact that he was handsome, yet imperfect, was the icing on the cake.

The bottom line is that I loved this book and I think it's Tracey's best contemporary novel to date. I was enthralled with the plot and the characters. This book had all the tension of a Dekker novel, but with a deeply romantic and emotional thread that only a woman can write in a way that women understand best. Fantastic story! It's making my best fiction list for 2012.

I won this book on LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program and I'm so glad I did! Widow of Saunders Creek was published by Waterbrook/Multnomah (Doubleday) and released in May 2012.