Life Really Does Revolve Around Promises Made, Kept, and Broken.

I did something today that I haven't done in a long, long time. I read a book from cover to cover. Being the Mother of three daughters ranging in age from almost 2 to almost 9, and taking care of a surly 11 year old strange boy surely I had other things needing my attention.

I started reading Belva Plain's Promises today while waiting for my middle daughter to get out of Summer Academy (summer program for high potential students - what kind of Mother would I be if I didn't take this moment to brag a big). It is now 11:31 and I just finished the book and have so many thoughts and feelings flowing through the recesses of my brain I just had to share with anyone who will read, what a truly wonderful book this was.

Life certainly revolves around Promises. When we are but a tiny mass of tissue in the belly of our Mothers, and the twinkle in our Father's eyes they make promises to us. When we are growing up we make promises; as well as break them. When we marry and have children of our own, more promises are made.

Whether or not we fulfill these promises, or those promises that are made to us are brought to fruition makes us into the people we are today.

In her book, Promises, Plain envelopes us into the Crane family. The opening pages of the book paint a picture of Margaret as she is with her Mother and future Mother-in-law having a fitting for her wedding dress; a dress lovingly hand sewn by the grooms Mother. As we read about how happy she, and in fact the entire town, are about the impending nuptials we get caught up into the love and joy of it all.

Caught up, that is, until we turn a few more pages and are stricken with the news that Adam doesn't intend to marry Margaret, and has been leading a double life with Randi. I tell you I wanted to reach into the pages and grab him by his sandy blond hair and shake him until the lower protruding body part he was thinking with fell off!

Belva Plain is an author I discovered about 3 years ago when I picked up a book at a garage sale that looked good. She's an amazing storyteller who weaves you so completely into her books that I became startled and disoriented when my youngest woke from her nap and called out that she needed a 'deeenk' (her word for drink). As a reader you feel she's writing to intellectuals, yet you don't need a dictionary to know what she's saying. I liked that feeling of being thought of as perhaps something more than I thought I was before hand. Silly, I know, to put so much into a book.

The cast list isn't huge, but long enough not to list and discuss all of them here in this review, yet short enough so that you know all that is necessary to know.

The two main characters are Margaret and her husband Adam. They have 3 children who play a huge role in the book, but not main roles.

Had Margaret lived across the street from me I wouldn't have liked her in any way, shape, or form. She's the kind of woman I despise, and hope I never become (nor raise my daughters too), yet I found myself admiring her towards the end of the book.

I think the line that set me up for disliking her was where she was thinking that if something were to happen to Adam (this was during the first few pages of the book that she thought this) that she would die..or not die, but wish she had for it surely would have been better to die than live without him. It wasn't love to me it was suffocation! I can totally understand loving someone so much that the thought of being without them was unbearable, but I can't understand smothering someone with love and smothering yourself with that person's thoughts and ideas so much so that you give up your own.

And give up her own is precisely what Margaret did. She gave up her own hopes and dreams for those of the wife of Adam Crane. And she did so unaware of the life Adam led with Randi.

I did enjoy the part when Randi dumped Adam because she found a richer man who's home had a pool and was surrounded by Palm trees. I just wish that Adam hadn't have been such a weakling wimp that he never got around to telling Margaret how he really felt and that he never had any intention of marrying her.

Of course, if he had got around to telling her the book would have ended there and I never would have spent this 95 degree day reading about the children they had, the contentment they felt as a family, and finally the tragedy that Adam brought unto them.

In Promises you will find a myriad of characters, thoughts, feelings, and emotions. There are sure to be a few that you can identify with as well as those that make you want to scream out loud.

I can not recommend this book enough. Reading Promises has made me appreciate what I have as well as regret the mistakes I have made along the way. Reading this book has given me a lot of promises to remember and be sure that I bring fulfillment to any promises made.