The Road To Redemption

Escaping Pretense by Deborah Jean Miller is a powerful contemporary novel about love and life and family. I absolutely adored it.

Everyone deserves to be loved – but within the book we meet a character who doesn’t think this applies to her. Every time someone gets close to her, she pulls away, believing her past disqualifies her from being loved. She doesn’t think she deserves love and this is heartbreaking. Deep down she is a good person, and this goodness is spotted by the young and the vulnerable in society who gravitate towards her kind heart.

We meet a loving family. They do life together and also reach out to those on the margins of society. “She wondered what a life like that would have felt like. To feel the closeness of a loving family, secure in each other’s company.” The reader’s heart breaks for a woman who has never known love, only pain.