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A review by pixieauthoress
Pieces of the Heart by Bonnie S. Calhoun
3.0
Cordelia Grace has been in love with Bernard Howard ever since he rescued her from a pack of bullies as a young teenaged. Now aged seventeen and with only one year remaining in her high school education, she dreams of graduating and marrying Bernard. But tensions rise in their neighbourhood as more young men are drafted into the Second World War and female classmates drop out of school to work in the local textile factories. Cordelia finds herself with less and less time to spend with the love of her life, and before she knows it, Bernard has been drafted. While waiting for Bernard to return, Cordelia tries to finish the quilt her grandmother started for her, attempting to reconcile her knowledge of God with the Lord her grandmother prayed to as she stitched scraps of fabric into Cordelia’s “prayer covering”. Will her prayers bring Bernard back safely, and help Cordelia to develop the kind of faith her grandmother always had?
I’ve had my eye on Abingdon Press’s Quilts of Love series for a while now, and Pieces of the Heart’s synopsis was too intriguing to ignore. While each of the novels in the series is a standalone book, each story focuses on a group of women working on a quilt that has significance to their family or community.
Pieces of the Heart turned out to be more complex and difficult to review than I had initially expected. I have a feeling the digital ARC I read still had a lot of edits to go through before it was published, so I'm going to give some issues (repetition, missing words, etc) the benefit of the doubt. Minor errors aside, this book had a lot of good things going for it. As a recent history graduate, the details of the segregation of soldiers in WWII and PTSD in returning servicemen particularly appealed to me as these are subjects that aren’t often addressed in Christian historical fiction. A lot of the US-based WWII fiction I’ve read is incredibly patriotic, and doesn’t dwell on such uncomfortable issues, so I was pleasantly surprised that Bonnie chose to tackle two very difficult topics.
That said, Pieces of the Heart did attempt to cover an incredibly wide range of subjects for such a short novel (a mere 220 pages) and as a result, some issues felt like they’d been skimmed over. I don’t want to spoil the plot for any potential readers, but the changes that Bernard’s abusive father went through happened a little too quickly to feel realistic. Perhaps if Bonnie had more pages in which to detail his reformation, it would have felt more believable. As it is, the abusive marriage storyline got a little buried under all the other issues.
I’m not sure if the synopsis for this book changed before it went to print, or if I merely misread it, but I thought this story was going to be about a married couple dealing with the husband’s return from war. Cordelia and Bernard don’t actually marry until after he returns from war, around 75% of the way into the book. Even before the war begins, they spend a lot of time apart, so this isn’t your conventional romance novel.
I’m also not sure how more mature readers will relate to seventeen-year-old Cordelia. Even I struggled with her immaturity, and I’m only twenty-one. On the other hand, this might be a good read for girls in their mid to late teens, particularly those who enjoy history but would rather read fiction than non-fiction. I can definitely see Cordelia appealing to this demographic, and the book definitely puts some of the more difficult aspects of this period of history in a more relatable light.
Bonnie does do a great job of setting the scene and getting a feel for the time period and location. The only times that I felt I was being info-dumped were in the scenes where Bernard was abroad during the war, and there’s always the chance these scenes were tightened up before the book went to print. Personally, I preferred the parts of the story set in Scranton, and I could definitely imagine Cordelia’s neighbourhood in my mind as I read the novel. I got a kick out of reading a novel set in this city, since one of my best friends from university grew up there.
I liked the secondary characters, particularly Gertie and Anna, but at times it felt like Gertie was just used as a vessel to tell the spiritual message of the story. The way in which the spiritual message was conveyed was a bit more preachy than I usually like, but this might not bother more traditional fans of the genre.
As much as I liked Gertie and Anna, I wished some of the other characters had more character development in order to explain their motivations and behaviour. I never figured out why Cordelia's parents were so strict, and as a result, they kind of felt like cardboard cut-outs at times. Again, I think this aspect of the story might have suffered from the low page-count.
Since this novel covers such a long time period, the story sometimes skips months or even years at a time, which made it difficult for me to really get to grips with Cordelia and Bernard’s characters and relate to them. Additionally, some scenes felt like they were cut short, and then the next chapter would be set three months later, which sometimes left me feeling like I’d missed out on a crucial piece of character development. There were a couple of scenes that could have built up more suspense if they’d been longer, or hadn’t suddenly jumped ahead.
I commend Bonnie for attempting to deal with some issues that are often ignored in Christian fiction from this period, and I think that with a longer word count and tighter writing, I would have enjoyed this book more. As it is, this book didn't entirely satisfy my expectations, but those looking for a quick read, especially younger readers and those who don't mind a more overt spiritual message, could find this book very enjoyable.
Review title provided by Abingdon Press.
I’ve had my eye on Abingdon Press’s Quilts of Love series for a while now, and Pieces of the Heart’s synopsis was too intriguing to ignore. While each of the novels in the series is a standalone book, each story focuses on a group of women working on a quilt that has significance to their family or community.
Pieces of the Heart turned out to be more complex and difficult to review than I had initially expected. I have a feeling the digital ARC I read still had a lot of edits to go through before it was published, so I'm going to give some issues (repetition, missing words, etc) the benefit of the doubt. Minor errors aside, this book had a lot of good things going for it. As a recent history graduate, the details of the segregation of soldiers in WWII and PTSD in returning servicemen particularly appealed to me as these are subjects that aren’t often addressed in Christian historical fiction. A lot of the US-based WWII fiction I’ve read is incredibly patriotic, and doesn’t dwell on such uncomfortable issues, so I was pleasantly surprised that Bonnie chose to tackle two very difficult topics.
That said, Pieces of the Heart did attempt to cover an incredibly wide range of subjects for such a short novel (a mere 220 pages) and as a result, some issues felt like they’d been skimmed over. I don’t want to spoil the plot for any potential readers, but the changes that Bernard’s abusive father went through happened a little too quickly to feel realistic. Perhaps if Bonnie had more pages in which to detail his reformation, it would have felt more believable. As it is, the abusive marriage storyline got a little buried under all the other issues.
I’m not sure if the synopsis for this book changed before it went to print, or if I merely misread it, but I thought this story was going to be about a married couple dealing with the husband’s return from war. Cordelia and Bernard don’t actually marry until after he returns from war, around 75% of the way into the book. Even before the war begins, they spend a lot of time apart, so this isn’t your conventional romance novel.
I’m also not sure how more mature readers will relate to seventeen-year-old Cordelia. Even I struggled with her immaturity, and I’m only twenty-one. On the other hand, this might be a good read for girls in their mid to late teens, particularly those who enjoy history but would rather read fiction than non-fiction. I can definitely see Cordelia appealing to this demographic, and the book definitely puts some of the more difficult aspects of this period of history in a more relatable light.
Bonnie does do a great job of setting the scene and getting a feel for the time period and location. The only times that I felt I was being info-dumped were in the scenes where Bernard was abroad during the war, and there’s always the chance these scenes were tightened up before the book went to print. Personally, I preferred the parts of the story set in Scranton, and I could definitely imagine Cordelia’s neighbourhood in my mind as I read the novel. I got a kick out of reading a novel set in this city, since one of my best friends from university grew up there.
I liked the secondary characters, particularly Gertie and Anna, but at times it felt like Gertie was just used as a vessel to tell the spiritual message of the story. The way in which the spiritual message was conveyed was a bit more preachy than I usually like, but this might not bother more traditional fans of the genre.
As much as I liked Gertie and Anna, I wished some of the other characters had more character development in order to explain their motivations and behaviour. I never figured out why Cordelia's parents were so strict, and as a result, they kind of felt like cardboard cut-outs at times. Again, I think this aspect of the story might have suffered from the low page-count.
Since this novel covers such a long time period, the story sometimes skips months or even years at a time, which made it difficult for me to really get to grips with Cordelia and Bernard’s characters and relate to them. Additionally, some scenes felt like they were cut short, and then the next chapter would be set three months later, which sometimes left me feeling like I’d missed out on a crucial piece of character development. There were a couple of scenes that could have built up more suspense if they’d been longer, or hadn’t suddenly jumped ahead.
I commend Bonnie for attempting to deal with some issues that are often ignored in Christian fiction from this period, and I think that with a longer word count and tighter writing, I would have enjoyed this book more. As it is, this book didn't entirely satisfy my expectations, but those looking for a quick read, especially younger readers and those who don't mind a more overt spiritual message, could find this book very enjoyable.
Review title provided by Abingdon Press.