BY ANN HOWARD CREEL
SUMMARY:
Set in 1944 Colorado, The Magic of Ordinary Days is the story of a young woman, Olivia Dunne, who became pregnant before marriage. Her father, Rev. Dunne, decided to deal with the situation, by arranging a marriage to a shy farmer through another preacher. The groom, Ray Singleton, lives on a remote farm and is very different than Livy. Ray focuses on what is close to him: his family, his land, today. Livy thinks on a much grander scale: the world, ancient civilizations, faraway places.
Ray's farm uses the help of Japanese Americans from a nearby Japanese American internment camp to help work the farm. Livy befriends two well-educated Japanese American women who were working the farm. She finds comfort and familiarity in their friendship. Livy is polite and civil to her new husband and his sister Martha, but she harbors feelings for the father of the baby, a World War II soldier, and feelings of guilt for the pregnancy. Ray, however, is caring, patient, and supportive of Livy, but the fact that she does not want him hurts him deeply. Slowly over time, the two come to understand and love each other...[Wikipedia]
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ann Howard Creel is the author of two award-winning young adult novels, Water at the Blue Earth and A Ceiling of Stars. This is her first adult novel.
REVIEWS:
A YA author’s nicely written adult debut novel blends historical richness and a fine sense of place to tell the story of a woman’s developing love for her husband—and for his Colorado farmland—over the course of six months in 1944….
Creel does a delightful job of evoking first the dreariness of the Singleton farm and Olivia's unnerving loneliness, then the slow ripening of her affection for Ray, a simple but profoundly kind and gentle man….The author gives her heroine a satisfying emotional depth, moving Olivia through phases of affection and disappointment with assured confidence before closing with a tranquil scene after the baby is born.
A light, precisely observed novel. (Kirkus)
AUTHOR’S WEBSITE:
http://annhowardcreel.com/
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