Into the Fire

If left to my own discretion, I wouldn’t have picked up this novel by Jenny B. Jones. The title is okay (and just okay), but the cover alludes to a bit of chick lit and vapid romance. It was substituted for a novel I ordered for the CFBA Tour in place of the new release from Susan Meissner which wasn’t ready for the tour. Most of you know I’m a die-hard romantic, but my romance readings require more than the “average” romance novel offers, so admittedly romance novels took a back seat—like at the very rear of a stretch limo—to thriller, horror, mystery, and romantic suspense this past year. The reason for those choices? The previous listed genres were written better for the most part. The exceptions were just that: exceptional. Such as Lisa Samson’s The Passion of Mary-Margaret and C. M. Burney’s Zora and Nicky to name two outstanding romance novels which were so much more than just romance but not adequately described by the tag “Women’s Fiction”.

So, if I had passed on Just Between You and Me, I would’ve missed out on a very good story. Yes, it was predictable, angsty romance, but the clever wit of Jenny B. Jones visited upon her heroine, Maggie Montgomery, along with the gut-level conflict based on the character’s painful upbringing pushed the story past its innate obstacles for me. We’re probably all tired of the “dysfunctional” label attached to families because the Lord knows we all qualify in some capacity. Dysfunctional isn’t quite extreme enough in defining the family matters of Maggie Montgomery. She did her best to leave behind the tormenting memories of her mother’s drowning, her sister’s hatred of her, and her dad’s indifference coupled with his incendiary verbal abuse, when she left small-town Ivy, Texas, to travel the world as a talented cinematographer and producer of a cable travel show. So when her dad calls desperately seeking her return home to help him with her niece because of her sister’s drug-induced abandoning habits, she succumbs because of guilt rather than desire.

Of course she doesn’t plan to stay and of course those plans go awry. But the experience Maggie must endure physically, emotionally, and spiritually to change the direction of her life go beyond the compulsive stressful consumption of candy, Twinkies, and those little chocolate donuts, the absolute ineptitude of her cooking skills, the necessity of wearing her pushup bras, and suffering the remnants of nearly everyone’s recollections of her either wild or snobbish stunts in high school.

She’s as flippant as her niece is rebellious, and both the internal and external dialogue makes for some very entertaining reading. Maggie’s one year old faith experience with the Lord is not enough to subdue the fears which keep erupting in different situations, sending her control issues scrambling for a new hold on a shifting reality and adding another area of potential inadequacy to her ever-expanding journal of life in Ivy, Texas.

With a heart for the suffering of children she’s witnessed, Maggie continues her editing of worldwide compilations of tragic recordings for a future documentary. But nobody wants it. Except her. More than anything she’s ever done.

A good story with clever, efficient, sad, but immensely humorous writing at times, Jenny B. Jones makes what could have been a typical romance novel something very special. I think the novel will appeal to a fairly broad (no pun intended) age bracket of female readership, but I’d probably zero in on the 20 to 40 range. There’s some good romance in this meaningful story, and we all know where it’s going, but it’s fun getting there just the same. A quick good read.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0373442726

Father, you know the investment Jenny makes into her work. You know her heart. You know the things you have for her to do. I pray you would continue to direct her paths, making them straight and providing encouragement all along the way. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.