The Book of Wow

I was in Wal-Mart a few weeks ago, for the sole purpose of eye-balling my new romance novel on this giant retailer’s shelves, when I stumbled across the book we’re going to talk about today.

I first plucked it off the shelf because of the title. Throw in the cover and the backjacket copy and, well, I was intrigued enough to buy the book.  I brought it home and set it on my nightstand with the hopes I’d get to it soon.

A few nights later I picked it up and read for about twenty minutes, the first few pages tipping me off to this author’s amazing ability of setting a scene…and characters…and story.

Wow.

The Book of Bright Ideas, by Sandra Kring, is a can’t-miss in my humble opinion. For a ton of reasons, this book spoke to me in a way few have in a very long time. In fact, I found myself folding over pages as I read simply because she said things in such a way I knew I’d want to refer back to them… 

Not as a writer, but as a person.

Here’s the bookjacket copy that sucked me in…

Wisconsin 1961. Evelyn “Button” Peters is nine when Winnalee Malone and her sister, Freeda, blow into town–and from the moment she sees them, Button knows this will be a summer unlike any other.

Much to her mother’s dismay, Button is fascinated by the malone sisters, especially Winnalee, a feisty scrap of a thing who carries around a shiny urn containing her mother’s ashes and a tome she calls “The Book of Bright Ideas.” It is here, Winnalee tells Button, that she recors everything she learns: her answers to the mysteries of life. But sometimes those mysteries conceal a truth better left buried. In this summer of dry heat and family upheaval, loyalties will be tested, unlikely alliances formed, and devastating secrets revealed. And when it’s over, no one–from Winnalee and her sister to Button and her family–will ever be the same.

That’s the back jacket copy.

To which I would add one word…

Wow.

There’s so much I want to say about this story, but can’t because I don’t want to ruin it for any of you who opt to go and get this (you should). But there are a few things I have to say…

Throughout the story, Winnalee and Button add things to their “Book of Bright Ideas.” Observations about life through the eyes of nine-year-olds…lessons that are both sweet and tender yet make you wince at times because they’re the kind of lessons you wish they didn’t have to learn.

Near the end of the story, Button learns a few more–though they aren’t ones that make their way into the special book. Nonetheless, they stood out to me (how could they not, the writing is spectacular)…

**”We looked around the room some more, not talking. I think Ma and Aunt Verdella felt like I did. Like a pumpkin after the insides have been scraped away. Ma and Aunt Verdella walked in front of me down the stairs, moving slow, just like me. I guess at that moment I learned that there’s nothing heavier to carry than emptiness.”

And then there was this which brings me to our topic…

**”It seems to me that after someone sweeps across your life like a red-hot flame, peeling back the shutters that sat over your heart and your mind and setting free your sweetest dreams or your worst nightmares, after things cool down you’ve got two choices.  You can either slip back into your old life, tucking those things you were too scared to look at back into hiding, or you can keep those parts of yourself out until you get so used to them that they don’t scare you anymore and they just become a part of who you are.”

Wow, huh?

So here’s my question for today–a tough one to pick as this book stirred up many for me:

Have you ever had someone enter your life who simply made it better? Someone who taught you things or shared special moments with you or changed you in some way…only to have them disappear?

~Elizabeth

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