Add This to Your Vacation Reading List

One Perfect Spring is a story that will win you over and tug at your emotions. This is my first experience reading anything written by  Irene Hannon and I am glad to say it won't be my last

Life lessons make for good stories and it is much safer to read about it in an arm chair than pass the test of our older and wiser peers. Keith Watson is a young man who is going places fast. His boss, David McMillan sees Keith as he himself once was; too busy for the things that matter the most: a wife and children to enjoy living life with. He brought the philanthropy side of his firm, McMillan Charitable Foundation in-house and assigned Keith to manage its day to day operations. Perhaps seeing something bigger than himself would put life into perspective for Keith.  David's wife had died a few years before leaving David to realize how much he missed by putting his work before his family. His daughter Debbie is still bitter about having a father who was always to busy for her recitals or to spend time as a family.

As the story opens we read a letter from 11-year old Haley, asking the foundation's help finding her neighbors child who was given up for adoption more than twenty years ago. As the letter goes, Dr. Chandler has been undergoing treatment for cancer and Haley want to reunite mother and son as a birthday gift. Keith tackles the challenge of finding Maureen Chandler's son with little to go on except where a private detective left the trail cold.

As the story continues life unfolds for Haley, her mother Claire, Keith, Maureen and David. All have a story to share. Anger, regret and forgiveness play a large role in this story; themes that are commonplace in human nature. It is what happens next that makes the best story and helps us understand how lives get so complicated in the first place. I did have my hankie nearby but it was worth it.