CFBA title of the week: It Happens Every Spring

About the authors:

GARY CHAPMAN is the author of the New York Times best seller The Five Love Languages and numerous othe rbooks. He's the director of Marriage & Family Life Consultants, Inc., and host of A Growing Marriage, a syndicated radio program heard on over 100 stations across North America. He and his wife, Karolyn, live in North Carolina.

CATHERINE PALMER is the Christy Award-winning, CBA best-selling author of more than forty novels--including The Bachelor's Bargain--which have more than 2 million copies in print. She lives in Missouri with her husband, Tim, and two sons.





About the book:

IT HAPPENS EVERY SPRING is the first of The Four Seasons fiction series, based on the ever-changing cycles of relationships detailed in Gary Chapman's nonfiction book The Four Seasons of Marriage. The novels will focus on four couples, each moving in and out of a different season.

Word travels fast at the Just As I Am beauty shop.

So when a simple homeless man appears on Steve and Brenda Hansen's doorstep, the entire shop is set abuzz, especially when Brenda lets him sleep on their porch.

That's not all the neighbors are talking about. Spring may be blooming outdoors, but an icy chill has settled over the Hansens' marriage. Steve is keeping late hours with clients, and the usually upbeat Brenda is feeling the absence of her husband and her college-age kids.

Add to that the unsavory business moving in next to the beauty shop and the entire community gets turned upside down. Now Brenda's friends must unite to pull her out of her rut and keep the unwanted sotre out of town. But can Steve and Brenda learn to thaw their chilly marriage and enjoy the hope spring offers?

MY REVIEW:

Is Deepwater Cove, Missouri just another lazy small town in mid-America? Not on your life.

A homeless man has taken up sleeping on Brenda Hansen’s porch, but that’s not her worst problem. Depression has set in since her kids went away to college and her husband Steve started working 24/7 at his real estate job. And when a handyman renovates her basement, will she get more than she bargained for? How will she save her icy cold marriage from freezing altogether? Can her friends band together and help pull her out of her misery in time?

This emotional story is great on at least two levels. Firstly, it has a cast of wonderful and varied characters, some of which are: Patsy, the prayerful owner of the “Just as I Am” beauty shop; Esther, the elderly town busybody; Ashley, the newly married girl; the divorced and remarried Kim and Patsy’s secret admirer and owner of “Rods ‘n’ Ends,” Pete.

Secondly, it presents the problem of a rocky marriage realistically, not sugar coating its tragedy. In the end, everything isn’t tied up in a neat little package, but hope is renewed in people’s lives, which is the necessary precursor for change.

I think this is a super way to introduce marriage principles into fiction. There will be three other novels for the three other seasons which I’m sure will prove to be just as delightful.

The Book Link