THE PAST & PRESENT, WOVEN TOGETHER — A REVIEW

When you weave a tale of a long-ago love gone wrong in with a contemporary story of a failed marriage, you come up with the captivating The Violets of March: A Novel.

Emily Wilson’s marriage has ended, and furthermore, she hasn’t been able to write anything since her bestselling novel was published years before. What to do? Well, she has always loved escaping to Bainbridge Island, and it’s been years since her last visit. So off she goes to stay for the month of March, at her Aunt Bee’s invitation.

What Emily doesn’t expect is that she’ll find an old diary, with snippets of a long-ago love tale, or that she’ll begin to rediscover another love of her own. But what does the diary have to do with her own past and her family’s secrets? And will her newly developing love turn out to be just another misstep in a life of such events?

Reading this lovely tale brought me right into the heart of this lush island, reminding me of trips to Seattle and another island very similar to this one. I recalled moments I enjoyed and how the connections I felt whenever I was in these same places brought so much wonder into my life. I loved the stories and how the threads began to come together finally as the book drew to a close. The characters were wonderfully detailed and felt so real to me. I also enjoyed how the young and the old could share so much of their lives together.

The mysteries that are finally resolved brought me to a feeling of closure, just as the characters experienced it, too. Five bright stars for this memorable story that I didn’t want to see end.