LEOTA'S GARDEN

Award-winning author Francine Rivers warmly shows how generational secrets can embitter and estrange families. Leota, neglected and alone, is 84. Her daughter shuns her until Annie, her granddaughter, breaks from her embittered mother's tradition of indifference and enters Leota's life to learn secrets never before revealed. Narrator Flo Schmidt captures the spirit of Leota's self-centered daughter and then flows smoothly into the warmth of Annie's character and the idealism of Corban, the college student who brings the story into focus. The pacing is appropriate, the characterization well done, and the ending, although bittersweet, filled with reconciliation and hope. G.D.W. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB/ MAR 05]