When the Morning Glory Blooms

This week, theChristian Fiction Blog Allianceis introducingWhen The Morning Glory BloomsAbingdon Press (April 1, 2013)byCynthia Ruchti
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Cynthia writes stories of hope that glows in the dark, merging her love for storytelling with inextinguishable hope for inexpressible hurts.

Cynthia spends her days diving into words, worship, and wonder and celebrating 40 years of marriage, three grown children, and five outrageously adorable grandchildren. One of her greatest joys is helping other writers grow in their craft. To that end, she served as the assistant director and a faculty member of the Quad Cities Christian Writers Conference, has served as worship and devotions staff for the Write-to-Publish conference, and teaches at other conferences as opportunities arise. She speaks to women’s groups, at mother-daughter banquets, and for women’s refresher days and retreats. It is her delight to serve on her church’s worship team. Rather than “busy,” she likes the term “active.”

For 33 years, Cynthia wrote and produced the radio broadcast The Heartbeat of the Home. The scripted radio drama/devotional broadcast aired on as many as 50 radio stations and two cable/digital television stations over the years. Cynthia was the editor of the ministry’s Backyard Friends magazine, a twenty-page, twice annual publication that reached 5,000 homes, churches, and parachurch outreaches.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Becky rocks a baby that rocked her world. Sixty years earlier, with her fiancé Drew in the middle of the Korean Conflict, Ivy throws herself into her work at a nursing home to keep her sanity and provide for the child Drew doesn't know is coming. Ivy cares for Anna, an elderly patient who taxes Ivy's listening ear until the day she suspects Anna's tall tales are not the ramblings of dementia. They're fragments of Anna's disjointed memories of a remarkable life. Finding a faint thread of hope she can't resist tugging, Ivy records Anna's memoir, scribbling furiously after hours to keep up with the woman's emotion-packed, grace-hemmed stories. Is Ivy's answer buried in Anna's past? Becky, Ivy, Anna--three women fight a tangled vine of deception in search of the blossoming simplicity of truth.

If you would like to read the first chapter of When The Morning Glory Blooms, go HERE.


MY THOUGHTS

I knew from reading Cynthia Ruchti's first novel that this would be a good book, and the beautiful cover promised a delightful story. However, I was unprepared for just how magnificent a novel this would be and how it would touch my heart! One of those rare books that you not only read but experience, When the Morning Glory Blooms weaves together three stories into one, stories of three different yet similar women whose lives span the decades. Authentic and heartrending in its emotion and honest about the pain each of these women faces in her life, this novel is first and foremost a tale of compassion, grace, and hope. While the connection between Ivy and Anna was obvious from their interactions, it was less apparent how Becky's life would intersect theirs but it was worth the wait. I highly, highly recommend this book. It's earned a place on my Favorites shelf!