Book Review – In the Garden of Sorrows by Karen Jewell @KarenJewellBook #20booksofsummer24

About the Book

Isabel Fuller, a strong, once passionate woman, is deadened with grief by the death of her oldest son in the First World War, haunted by visions of him dying alone, and bitter at her husband for encouraging him to enlist.

When a young, charismatic preacher arrives for a revival one summer, he awakens in Isabel an intense attraction and feelings long forgotten. When she finally succumbs to his seduction, their affair pushes Isabel’s marriage to the breaking point.

Format: eBook (279 pages) Publisher: MindStir Media
Publication date: 26th April 2023 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

Officially I’m closed to review requests except from authors I’ve worked with before. However, occasionally a book comes along that makes me break my rule. If you read my Q&A with author Karen Jewell, you’ll get a sense of why I did just that in the case of In the Garden of Sorrows.

Isabel is a woman consumed by grief at the loss of her eldest son, Carl. Although she carries on with the daily routine of household chores, her sorrow – that she describes as ‘her familiar companion’ – has given rise to an emotional distance which sees his bedroom become a sanctuary but also a place of retreat. However Isabel has not been completely hollowed out emotionally or become blind to the plight of others, in particular a young girl living in a nearby shanty town.

Gripped by a kind of madness and ignoring the voices that tell her she’s on the road to self-destruction, Isabel allows herself to be led into a passionate affair with the Reverend Micah Kane. It risks destroying both her marriage and her relationship with her three remaining sons. I’m sure I’m not the only reader to wonder if Kane’s affair with Isabel is the result of genuine attraction on his part or mere opportunism? Whichever, for a time, the affair fulfils Isabel’s needs – both physical and emotional – in a way her husband Edward can’t. That’s because she blames him for Carl’s death, angry that he did nothing to stop him enlisting or may even have encouraged him. Her grief is so overwhelming that she fails to consider the possibility that he is experiencing the same intense sorrow and regret as her. She can’t see – or chooses not to see – the small attempts he makes to reach out to her in the effort to repair things between them. Although not everything he does is laudable, I actually found Edward a very sympathetic character.

In the Garden of Sorrows is described as an ‘erotically charged story’ and there are scenes of intense sexual intimacy but these are depicted in a way that is sensual rather than, shall we say, anatomical. I found myself completely absorbed in Isabel’s story and the book’s conclusion both intensely moving and uplifting. This is an author who has a gift for storytelling.

I received a digital review copy courtesy of the author. In the Garden of Sorrows is book 5 of my 20 Books of Summer 2024.

In three words: Passionate, moving, immersive
Try something similar: Blasted Things by Lesley Glaister

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About the Author

Karen Jewell is a former trial attorney and author of numerous pieces of nonfiction. She has an undergraduate degree in English, a Master’s in Business Administration, and earned her Juris Doctorate degree at the University of Michigan. Karen lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband. In the Garden of Sorrows is her first novel.

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