Unless Review

The Plot: 

How often do you start reading a book and find you can't put it down, have to keep reading and wish it didn't end?

This book is a prime example. The jacket describes this book as the story of an author with family issues, one of which is a daughter who quits college to become homeless.

Sounds depressing, but this book is anything but.. Reta Winters is an author trying to write her second book while helping an older author translate her stories. In the midst of her professional work, family life intervenes, and the story of Reta's daughter becomes the focus for family and personal change.

the oldest of Reta's three daughters decides on the cusp of her nineteenth birthday to throw up her studies and live on the street with a simple cardboard sign - on which the word GOODNESS is written - on a string around her neck. Reta has no idea why her daughter has chosen this path and that - the abstract decision to withdraw from the life you are expected to live - throws the world out of kilter.

Reta is a feminist and her friends and colleagues are involved with the feminist movement to improve the life of women. Reta, her husband, and two youngest daughters are keeping the errant daughter in their lives through daily pryaers, thoughts and bags of cheese sandwiches left at the site where the daughter sits day after day with her sign and collects money given to her by stangers. 

My Take:

This is a story that surprises, delights and ends on an up note that gives us all hope for goodness in our own lives.