Avonelle’s Gift

Generations of life, love, and death, swirling in the currents of history

I wear a locket filled with my grandmother’s bones.

So begins Avonelle’s Gift.

Can a descendant reach back into her family’s stories and recover relatives who have been lost, forgotten, rejected, or excluded? What can she discover and retrieve as she breaks through negative judgments about her family’s past? Avonelle’s Gift vividly captures the history of a family over four generations, beginning with the love affair of two teenagers in 1900. A pregnant girl marries to save her family’s name during the years when childbirth and infancy are fraught with danger and mothers and babies could die. This book tells of two motherless children and how each affected the other.

By blending available facts with both her historical research and her imagination, the author has filled in the missing pieces of a tale that deserves to be told. As she focuses on bringing out what is emotionally true, she expresses the depth and complexity she finds in her family over several generations.

Avonelle’s Gift tells of early deaths, lost loves, lost families, unbridled ambition, political corruption, social ostracism, and redemption at a time when people could begin anew and rebuild their lives for the better. Like so many family stories with villains, victims, and heroes, it tells of courage, determination, and the capacity for human hearts to change.