Worthy by Catherine Ryan Hyde

What do we deserve? Are we worth enough to demand fairness? When life has dealt us one blow, with one loss after another, should we expect something better, something more, or just more of the same?

Catherine Ryan Hyde's books deal with broken people who find happiness in unconventional ways. I first read "Don't Let Me Go" several years ago. The novel centers around a child whose mother is a drug addict. The child befriends a neighbor with agoraphobia and pushes him to face his fear to help take care of her. I next read "When I Found You"; while duck hunting Nathan finds a baby and takes him home. He becomes attached but the child's grandmother claims the baby. Fifteen years later the frustrated grandmother dumps the troubled boy at Nathan's doorstep. "Electric God" is about an angry man who needs to make peace with his past mistakes. "When You Were Older" deals with a man who after the deaths of his parents finds himself returning home to be a caretaker for his disabled brother. He befriends an Egyptian family being targeted in the aftermath of 9-11. My review for "The Language of Hoofbeats", about a horse and a girl saving each other, can be found here.

Her latest book "Worthy" has all the earmarks of her previous books: real people with real problems striving to find peace and wholeness in a broken world.

The night that widower Aaron and waitress Virginia admit their feelings and decide to date Aaron is killed in a freak accident. Aaron's son Buddy is taken away by his maternal grandfather. Virginia is left mourning but Buddy had given her one gift: the restaurant where she worked was up for sale and Buddy told Virginia she should buy it.

Nineteen years have passed. Virginia did buy the restaurant. She is engaged to a man but he is far from the gentleman that Aaron was. And Buddy, now called Jody, is a damaged young man watching his grandfather's senility take away the only family he remembers.

One brutally cold winter day Jody sees a man dump a dog and drive away. Jody takes the dog in and names him Worthy. But the owner of the dog is searching for him.

I don't want to give away the plot line. So that's all you get of that!

The dog Worthy teaches both of the people who love him what it means to accept their failings and see their strengths, to know that we are worthy of asking for better.

I received a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Worthy
by Catherine Ryan Hyde
Lake Union Press
Publication date June 2, 2015
ISBN: 9781477830130
Price 14.95 paperback