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

The Language of Hoofbeats by Catherine Hyde Ryan

Early after I got my Kindle I downloaded several books by Catherine Hyde Ryan. She has been a happy discovery and I have read five of her books in the last few years. Hyde's books always leaves one feeling elevated and optimistic about the human race. Her characters are flawed and damaged but grow into a more healthy version of themselves. Her publisher Lake Union Publishing pre-approved me to read any of their NetGalley offerings and it included The Language of Hoofbeats. They also published The Banks of Certain Rivers which I read and reviewed last month.

The Language of Hoofbeats is a well written book with great characters, socially relevant issues, and a realistic but sanguine outcome to the central crisis.

We encounter a Modern Family of the 21st century: two moms with an adopted son and two foster kids. The adopted eight year old son is a lovable and sweet child. Their foster son Mandy is aloof but no trouble. He misses his mom who is wrongfully imprisoned. The newest addition is Star, a difficult and unlikeable girl whose mother is mentally ill.  

The family has moved and their new neighbor is a sixty year old woman who literally scares folk away she is that mean. He husband has left her after she could not tell him one thing that makes her happy. She can't bear to take care of her deceased daughter's horse, but also can't bear to lose the one thing her daughter loved.

Star secretly takes on the horse's care and under threat of separation the girl runs away with the horse. The two families are forced to work together creating a domino effect of changes in all their lives.  

I enjoyed this book as much as the others I have read. Don't Let Me Go was about a little girl who enlists the help of her apartment neighbors, creating  a surrogate family while her mother struggles with addiction. When You Were Older deals with racial profiling after 9-11. The main character narrowly missed dying in a Twin Tower office and has returned to his small home town. He meets an Egyptian woman whose father becomes a target of violence. Electric God is about a tormented  man full of anger that dates back to the death of his brother. When I Found You concerns a man who finds a baby in the woods and wants to keep him. But the baby has a grandmother. Fifteen years later the grandmother returns the boy, now with a police record, to him.

The author is most well known for Pay It  Forward upon which the movie starring Haley Joel Osment was based and  became the motivation for the social movement and foundation of paying it forward.