THE SWEET BY AND BY

Jade Freedom Fitzgerald will marry upper-class Tennessee lawyer Maxwell Charles Benson in one week. Before the wedding she resolves to make peace with her mother, an aging hippie; annul a previous marriage; and settle her issues regarding her father, who abandoned her. With Southern intonation, Lisa Seals delivers this redemptive family narrative from country music star Sara Evans and romance novelist Rachel Hauck. Using subtle inflections to differentiate characters, Seals captures the players in this dysfunctional family and family-to-be with exquisite emotional detail that many will identify with. However, the shifts between Jade's past and present make the story hard to follow. G.D.W. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE 2010]