Tammy Walton Grant's Reviews > Morning Glory

No one wrote a love story quite like LaVyrle Spencer did. I haven't read another author who got me to care that much about her characters -- butterflies in my stomach, ache in my heart, lump in my throat.

Spencer had a very specific talent. Her heroes weren't always impossibly handsome, nor were her heroines long-tressed beauties with perfect lips. There were no pirate ships or ballrooms or carriages. She took run-of-the-mill folks and made them beautiful. Just ordinary people, leading regular lives. Spencer's talent lay in making these people come alive - they virtually jump off the pages.

In Morning Glory they were people like Elly Dinsmore - five months pregnant, poor, with brown hair that needed washing and a tired face that was old before it's time. And Will Parker. He is thin, hungry, desperate. Needing a haircut with "brown eyes that looked as if he worked hard to keep the expression out of them".

Elly has spent most of her life living in a house with the blinds drawn. She was born out of wedlock to the daughter of a travelling preacher and watched her mother go crazy and die inside the house. She has always been a recluse, known as "Crazy Elly" to everyone in town. She married to escape; now widowed, with 2 small boys and pregnant with her third, she advertises in the classifieds for a husband.

Will has never belonged anywhere. Abandoned as an infant, living in foster homes until he struck out on his own at 14, he bounced around from place to place. His last bounce ended him in prison convicted of murder. He has just been fired from a labourer's job after his record is discovered. He is mocked by the foreman who suggests he reply to Crazy Elly's ad for husband. Desperate and almost starving, he does.

No one had ever given either a chance. This book is about Elly and Will - and the chances they took with each other. To Will, Elly represents everything he never had -- a home, a family, a mother, a lover, a wife, a place where he belongs. For Elly, Will is a father for her children, a provider, a man. Most of all, he shows her what love is - passionate, romantic, unconditional love. They become so much more together than they ever were alone. They stand taller, prouder, they are beautiful - first to each other then to themselves. They each redeem the other.

I won't give away much more of the story than I already have -- Will and Elly marry, of course, but there is so much more to the book -- a wonderfully drawn secondary character, a couple of villians. Will joins the Marines and ships out to the South Pacific. A section of the book is simply their letters to each other, full of love and yearning. Beautifully done. Will returns home with Purple Heart and a bit of PTSD; there is a murder and their relationship is tested.

My rating when I re-read this book recently was 4 stars. I've been thinking about it while writing this, and looking at other reviews. One review had as it's tag line "A tender story of longing and fulfillment..." and it really is. Another said "Spencer is a master storyteller, and this is one of her best", and it's that too. So I'm changing my rating to a 5 star.

This book made my heart hurt. I didn't want it to end.

Highly recommended!!!