Her Daughter's Dream-Francine Rivers

Her Daughter's Dream
Francine Rivers
Tyndale, Sep 14 2010, $24.99
ISBN: 9781414334097

In 1951 Hildemara Rose is back in the hospital suffering from tuberculosis and a fear she is dying. Her husband Trip told her mom Marta who has come to help with the children Charlie and Carolyn as well as take care of the house.

While Hilde remains in an isolated ward with other TB victims, her daughter and her mother bond. After several months away, Hilde returns home, but is angry that her Carolyn and Oma Marta have a special connection. The tension between mother and daughter grows over the next decade plus and impacts the granddaughter who believes she is the cause and decides in 1965 college is her escape. While Charlie joins the Marines, Carolyn attends Berkley. However, a tragedy destroys Carolyn’s sense of being and she flees into the counterculture. Two more years pass before she returns home to her parents with a daughter, May Flower Dawn who bonds with her grandmother. This leads to history repeating itself as a war between her mom and her grandma ignites, but Dawn plans to be the bridge not the divider between them.

The second Marta’s Legacy (see Her Mother’s Hope) completes the saga with a strong epic family drama that occurs over a half of a century. The ensemble cast is fully developed so that the audience will understand motives of each individual that sometimes lead to internal strife. Although Her daughter’s Dream stands alone, readers will appreciate Francine River’s powerful twentieth century duology.

Harriet Klausner