What about love?

What About Love?

Falling in love is wonderful, terrifying, exhilarating, and heartbreaking.
When I read a great description of falling in love, I want to read it over and over. "Seventeenth Summer" was written by Maureen Daly before she was twenty and published in 1942. I read this book each summer, and every time I read it I feel my heart ache for the heroine, Angie, as she finds herself falling in love with Jack. Although this book was written in the 1940's, Angie's feelings are the same ones I have had each time I have fallen in love. She is shy at first, and feels awkward with Jack, who is so much more worldly than she is. But as she realizes the depth of his feelings for her, she understands the power that love has. If you ever had to say goodbye to someone you loved who was moving away, going to a different school,going into the military, or just breaking up with you, then you will be amazed at how perfectly Maureen Daly describes those emotions.

Written by Lee Smith when she was in her twenties, "Something in the Wind" is no longer in print, although all of her other amazing books are. I have owned two copies,and lent them both out...and now, I no longer have this book. Someday, I will find it at a used bookstore(Emma, take a look for me, please!. I love each of Ms. Smith's books, but I first read "Something in the Wind" shortly after it was published in 1971, when I was in college just like the heroine of the novel, Brooke Kincaid. Brooke is recovering from the death of the man everyone thought she would marry when the novel opens. Like Angie, in "Seventeenth Summer", she has led a sheltered life, but when she arrives at a huge university, she begins to question everything about her privileged southern upbringing. Then, she meets a golf-playing, sexually aggressive, scholarship student and falls in love in that overwhelmingly insane way we can only seem to do when we are in our teens. That I want this couple to succeed so much tells me how powerfully Lee Smith connects with her readers and puts on paper the heart wrenching experience that love can be.

Do not miss any of Lee Smith's books, for each of them is unique and beautifully written.