April Geremia’s “The Leap of Forgiveness”

Joshua McKeon is a young fisherman with a seeming inability to make relationships last. But Isabelle, the owner of a bookshop on Bell Island, may change all that. They fall in love, spend time together, enjoy being with each other, until Joshua begins an almost inevitable pulling away.

The reason lies in the past. Joshua’s mother Grace supposedly committed suicide when he was almost six, and he was raised by Edgar and Edith Malley, for whom his mother worked as a cook. But it was a loveless family, and Joshua never forgot his mother.

And then Joshua begins to receive letters. The letters are from his mother. And gradually he learns what really happened.

The Leap of Forgiveness is the second book in April Geremia’s “Souls of the Sea” series, and it’s a fascinating story, in the inspirational Christian romantic mystery genre (I didn’t know genres could get that specific). The first book in the series was The Fragrance of Surrender.

In this second book, Geremia explores two stories simultaneously – Joshua’s unraveling of the mystery surrounding his mother, which serves to grow his anger against the couple who raised him, and what looks to be the unraveling of the love between Joshua and Isabelle. The narrative moves back and forth between the two stories, as it moves from Bell Island to California and Texas and back to Bell Island.

Threaded through the stories is a third – will Joshua understand and accept the faith that leads to forgiveness?

A Leap of Forgiveness is a warm, moving story of how old love and new love overcome even the worst of circumstances.

Related: My review of The Fragrance of Surrender.

Illustration by Paul Brannon via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.