Wonderfully Warm

For Six Good Reasons by Lin Stepp is a most charming contemporary novel that warmed my heart and made me smile. It is the third A Smoky Mountain novel but can be read as a stand-alone.

Once more Lin Stepp delights the reader’s senses as she paints the landscape with her words. The area is remote and rugged, the houses offer hospitality and the barns provide shelter. The reader meanders through the novel as we explore the area with the characters.

All the characters were well drawn, realistic and charming. Lin Stepp has perfectly captured the five year old twins with their mannerisms, words and zest for life. They act before they think but their hearts are good.

For Six Good Reasons is about fostering. Six siblings need a home together. Foster worker, Alice, refuses to split the family, preferring to give the children a home with her. The love and care exude from the novel. We understand the children’s fear. “What if we start to love you … and then you die, too?” This is counter balanced with a vow to always look after each other.

We see the hostility encountered at school, simply by being foster children – until a kind-hearted soul rides into town and saves the day.

Motherhood is more than just physically giving birth. Mothering is love, care and time. “What did you want most from our mother?… Her time.” Wow! The effects of neglect in childhood, follow a character into adulthood. It is heart-breaking to see a child suffering because their mother was distracted from their duty of care. In contrast, we see the siblings have not only their foster mother but the two eldest ‘mother’ the younger ones too.

Prayer is important. Prayer connects us to God and to each other. Prayer rescues us from our situations.

Love blossoms where it will. Sometimes it needs a helping hand and sound advice from a five year old!

I thoroughly enjoyed For Six Good Reasons. It was positively delightful, warm and witty. It’s a novel about family in the microcosm and the macrocosm. I loved it.

JULIA WILSON