Book Club -The Stories We Carry By Robin W Pearson

Hosted by Claire Musters

The Stories We Carry By Robin W Pearson (Tyndale, 978-8400501258)

This contemporary novel is set in a small town in North Carolina, where most of the action happens in a bookshop, By the Book, run by 63-year-old Glory Pryor. Into this small town arrives newly widowed single mother Adelle and her son Bennett – and Glory instantly connects with the boy. However, something is off between the women and they immediately clash. Having married Eli as an older woman, Glory has put everything into her business and drawn many from the community that surrounds it. But she has deep pain from her past, and is still holding out for the day when her estranged brother will return. While Eli wants them to sell up and head off for adventure during their retirement, Glory simply cannot let go of all she has worked so hard for. She also feels deep guilt over an event from her childhood, and struggles to forgive her parents and church for all the pain from her past, saying that neither she nor her brother “were anywhere to be found in her parents’ day-to-day worship of the God they believed in.”

The book beautifully weaves their personal journeys, and the awkward relationships that grow and develop, as both women navigate their own pain and loss to find a way forward, as well as allow others into their as-yet-untold stories. At the back are questions for book clubs to utilise if they want to.