All She Ever Wanted

September 5, 2005
One of Christian fiction's favorite authors pens an engaging story about family secrets that begins powerfully, but eventually loses steam. Kathleen Seymour's carefully constructed world starts to collapse when her teenage daughter, Joelle, is caught shoplifting and a row with her boss leaves Kathleen unemployed. After a few sessions with a therapist, Kathleen tries reconnecting with her daughter by taking her to a party hosted by the estranged family members Kathleen left years ago. Through multiple points of view and rich, detailed flashbacks to previous generations, Austin convincingly illustrates how shame and bad choices can affect families for years. The fairy-tale ending is less convincing, as it's replete with former delinquents spouting pat phrases; it's also implausible that painful relationships between family members are easily repaired with a single trip back home. But the three-time Christy Award winner offers the surprising plot twists and fresh language that keep her fans coming back to the bookstores for each new novel.

Starred review from November 1, 2005
Thirty years ago, Kathleen Seymour left Riverside and never looked back to build a good life with husband Mike and daughter Joelle in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Maryland and never looked back. Lately, however, Joelle's teenage rebellion is leaving Kathleen exasperated. After a shoplifting arrest, the family sees a therapist, who suggests that the key to helping Joelle lies in her mother's making peace with her unhappy childhood. While Kathleen wants nothing to do with her estranged family, she is intent on helping her daughter and so accepts an invitation to a party for her father. During the road trip, Kathleen tries to explain her family difficulties to Joelle: with a thief for a father, brothers in and out of trouble, a mother who gave up on life, and an eccentric uncle obsessed with communism, Kathleen has few happy memories. Before long, the reader learns the reasons behind each character's actions. Austin's rich portrait of a family's rise from ruin is only marred only by a saccharine ending. Still, it is well worth the read. Recommended for most collections. The three-time Christy Award winner ("Fire by Night"; "Candle in the Darkness"; "Hidden Places") lives in the Chicago area.

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.