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.
