Summer Snow

Nicole Baart
Tyndale House Publishers (2008)
ISBN 9781414316239
Reviewed by Paige Lovitt for Reader Views (5/08)


An unplanned pregnancy causes Julia DeSmit to drop out of college.  She returns home to the house that she was raised in.  Julia’s father passed away when she was a teen.  Abandoned by her mother ten years prior, her paternal grandmother has stepped into the role of raising her.  Julia gets a job at a grocery store.  The other employees are interesting in their own right.  She finds herself having to deal with the interactions among them and her own physical limitations as her pregnancy continues to develop.

Julia has resigned herself to the fact that the child will be raised without a father, by his choice.  She also is dealing with the fact that the true love of her life, from her youth, is getting married.  Having maintained a close relationship with his family, she is around while they are making the preparations.

Julia carries a great deal of pain and hurt from when her mother abandoned her.  She never understood why she did what she did.  As she is preparing to become a mother herself, she thinks about this a lot.  When her mother shows up on her grandmother’s doorstep with a half-brother for Julia, she has difficulties accepting her presence.  She is able to bond with her adorable little brother.  Julia’s mother tries to reach out to her, and her grandmother encourages this, but Julia is still very angry.  As she gets to know her mother better she realizes that a lot of her mother’s decision to leave was based upon her mother’s problems and issues and not something that Julia did.  This gives her a better understanding of why she did what she did, but she can’t excuse it.

Meanwhile, Julia continues to work and to prepare for her own motherhood.  Work is not easy, but some of her newfound friends that she works with step in to try to help accommodate her needs.  She also begins to feel her mother slipping away again.  Julia’s underlying faith helps get her through everything.

“Summer Snow” is the sequel to “After the Leaves Fall.”  It stands well on its own, so it can be read and enjoyed without having read the other one first.  It is a beautiful story full of faith and hope.  It does not glamorize teen pregnancy, but it does show that it is not the path to take.  This would be an excellent novel for a woman’s or teen’s readers group.

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