Rolling Toward Clear Skies
Catherine Ryan Hyde
Published November 12, 2024
Lake Union Publishing
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This is the latest offering from my favourite contemporary women’s fiction writer, Catherine Ryan Hyde. It still amazes me that she finds something new to write about twice a year. This one explores the impact that adoption of two orphaned teenagers has on a broken family. I didn’t love it as much as some of her previous novels, mainly because of the characters, who are at best bland and difficult to cheer for, and at worst odious narcissists, but it’s still an uplifting comfort read with the usual heartwarming resolution.
Maggie Blount is a primary care physician and the divorced mother of two impossible to please teenage girls, Willa and Gemma. She recognises her role in spoiling them, but doesn’t know how to fix it. Her escape is her job with emergency response charity, Doctors on Wheels, that she runs with her handsome younger boyfriend, nurse Alex. When they travel to Louisiana after a severe hurricane in their clinic on wheels, the last thing she expects is to bring home two shellshocked girls and their hungry rescue puppy. Jean and Rose are kind, polite and humble – everything her own selfish children are not. Can Maggie unite her new blended family or has she made a terrible mistake?
This was a quick read and I enjoyed the first part about the medics helping the victims of the hurricane in various ways and meeting the two orphans. The middle part, where they return to California and have to face the wrath of Maggie’s monstrous offspring, was harder to read about – it got rather repetitive and I found the new girls’ saccharine passivity and pliability too good to be true. The denouement is no great surprise, although the social media aspects were at least thought-provoking, and we get an appropriately happy ending. Thanks to NetGalley and Lake Union for the ARC.
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