Those We Love Most

Those We Love Most by Lee Woodruff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three normal but flawed generations of family, who are already close to splintering, are broken when one of the youngest is involved in a fatal accident. Can love and loyalty overcome even the deepest hurt?

Two favorite quotes:

"People always came out of the woodwork at a time like this, for good and bad. There was some need in human nature to insert yourself immediately, to take action, even if you knew the person only tangentially. The proximity to tragedy and sorrow caused an immediate evaluation of your own relative good fortune. The people who really understood, though, would hang back until the right moment, knowing that the real work began when all of the cars had left the driveway."

"Trust took such a long time to earn. And yet it could all come unmoored in an instant. She was smart enough to know at least that. People kept secrets. People built walls. It didn't mean they couldn't and didn't love with all their hearts. And so this was what she would have to make peace with: this was what she would have to hold close. Like the cross section of a tree, the bad period would be marked in interior rings, the years of drought, the blunt force trauma to the heart, all of it only visible after death. Maybe silence was a price we sometimes paid for loving so completely, the price we sometimes paid to protect those we loved most."

Lee Woodruff's main characters are well fleshed out and you will feel their families' gamut of emotions as heartbreaking events unfold.


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