POSITIVELY GOOD READS

Blessings (2002)

by Anna Quindlen

Blessings is the family estate on which Lydia Blessings has lived her long adult life. In Anna Quindlen’s heart-warming novel, blessings has another meaning as well: The infant who is abandoned on the estate brings blessings to Lydia and to Skip Cuddy, the caretaker who finds her.

Skip hasn’t been lucky so far in his young life. His mother died, his father left him with a disagreeable aunt and uncle, and he has bad companions who landed him in jail. Recently released, he is starting to work at Blessings when he finds the forsaken newborn in a box. Unfathomably, Skip wants to keep the baby. It doesn’t take long for snoopy Lydia to discover what Skip is hiding. The cranky, rigid old woman is moved to secretly help Skip care for the girl he names Faith. In flashbacks to Lydia's past, Quindlen reveals how a secret involving another birth, that of Lydia's daughter 60 years before, governed the fates of Lydia and her beloved late brother.

Blessings is an old-fashioned story about the power of love to change and redeem. Skip and Lydia, opposites in social background and personality, form a family for the infant with more love than either knew themselves. Even though their improbable mission doesn’t turn out as they wished, the experience transforms each of them into better human beings.




 


Home               My reviews               My friends' reviews