What Are Friends For? "Sunny Days, Moonlit Nights" by Jean C. Joachim

Caroline Davis White is a well-known artist and married to a wealthy, controlling man. She has everything money could buy except one thing: love. Brad refuses to give her a divorce she so desperately wants. With no money, family, or friends, she flees to the Catskill Mountains where she spent her summers as a young adult.

Mike Foster has achieved success and made more money than he could have thought possible, but it destroyed his marriage and cost him his son. he is wary of every woman he meets, knowing his money may be more attractive than his good looks. Caroline reconnects with the life she had and friends from long ago. Mike stepped out of her teenage dreams into her life again, looking more handsome and tempting than ever. Caroline knew Mike back then, but is he still the man she fell in love with?

This is a very provocative love story about two hurting, disillusioned people who reconnect after many years but who now bring a sizeable load of baggage with them. Once they were young and carefree, spending their summers with friends, enjoying the mountains and swimming in the local lake, looking forwarrd to life's many possibilities. Now both have been hurt in significant ways and even though the old feelings seem to be alive in each of them, they both have secrets and along with those secrets come fears that revealing their true selves and the present dimensions of their lives, they could lose far more than they ever have before.

Caroline has been married for a number of years to a man who seemed to care for her in the early days of their marriage. Now, for the past two or three years, he has reverted back to his old ways and has been openly unfaithful to her, even to the point of discussing his affairs openly with her. He refuses her requests for divorce because in his mind, Caroline is a possession--a beautiful asset to his position as a wealthy man and a figure in New York society. Her fame as an artist has also become his "property" and no matter what she says to him, Brad takes delight in controlling every aspect of her life. Somehow she has amassed some funds and she is now walking out on him when he is out of town, hiding her location from him, and beginning divorce proceedings. With the help of a very good attorney who happens to be a good friend, Caroline tries to get her life back.

Her destination is the old summer cabin her family used for years in the Catskills. There she runs into the handyman who looks familiar--turns out he is her long-time friend and buddy Mike Foster. He is still doing odd jobs in the area and on several nights a week he appears at a local establishment with his rock band. Caroline is delighted to find her old friend who happens to be the man who made her heart sing so many years ago. He is now more handsome than ever, and while she is fully aware that she is still married, she knows that down deep she is still in love with him. Their old friendship is re-established and the old feelings re-emerge for them both. But Caroline and Mike are deeply fearful of being blunt honest--he is a multi-millionaire who has returned to his boyhood home, and she is a married lady in the midst of a messy divorce. This does not bode well for either of them or for their future together unless they can get past all these secrets.

This novel really digs into the heart of what it means to build trust between two people whose emotions become entangled. Obviously, withholding such basic facts about their individual situation is not a good foundation for building any semblance of relationship. While they are having fun reconnecting, their are others who are seeking to bring them both down publically. The media is seeking the "missing wife" of the wealthy New Yorker which places her ability to get her life away from Brad in danger, and any dirt they can dig up or manufacture on Mike is going to put his visitation rights with his son in difficulty. Lots of serious consequences for these two if all does not go well. Caroline has her art and Mike has his life and his music. Can they find a way past the fear and distrust and disappointment and find their way back to each other?

Both Caroline & Mike are like so many today who have become caught up in their lives, in their circumstances, and who have been injured deeply by persons in their lives they once loved and trusted. Those are the most painful kinds of wounds. There does come a time when the new and very vulnerable relationship between Mike and Caroline takes a beating--is really in danger of being destroyed, and how they get past that challenge with all its questions and sadness is a large part of the latter half of the novel. Their story reflects the kinds of challenges so many face when somehow they must find a way to rebuild what was once a good and emotionally satisfying love. Sometimes it works out, but for others the relationship cannot every be rebuilt.

I found this novel compelling and as is true in so much fiction, it combines true literary entertainment with some insight on living that can be helpful to many. Certainly it is instructive to think carefully about the values of honesty and open communication no matter what. In Caroline's case, would it have really hurt her chances with Mike if she had been upfront with him from the beginning? I don't think so. Perhaps his experience of going through a painful divorce could have been a helpful resource for her. Is there really any value in "going it alone" if there exists a friend whose judgment is trustworthy? Again, I don't think so. These were two critical errors Caroline made that came back to bite her in the backside. Reading this story was a very good experience and the book is one that I am sure I will be re-reading in the near future. I don't think this is a simplistic story--too many interesting characters and too much at stake for it to be simply a "girl meets boy" kind of romance. The situations in this story are messy because human life and relationships are messy. That is one of the things that makes for good fiction.

So I recommend this to romance fans and believe it will be a book well worth reading. I give it a rating of 4.5 out of 5.

Review: Now and Forever A Love Story by Jean C. Joachim

This is the inaugural fictional work of Ms Joachim who is a published author in the non-fiction field. It is a story of a hurting, grieving young woman who has lost her best friend and fiance in the war in the Middle East. He had been her friend and support during the dark days after her parents' death when she was sixteen. Their friendship had grown into love and they were planning to be married after this final deployment overseas, a tour of duty from which he never returned.

Now Callie Richards is 26 years old, having grieved for two long and lonely years, and she has decided that she needs to complete her post-graduate education at a New York university. Taking part of the insurance money she had received from Kyle's estate, she embarks on what she hopes will be a new start in her life. She is really broke, barely has enough money to live and only if she misses a few meals during the week. She takes a part-time job in the university's administrative office where she comes in contact with the two academic deans and the president of the school. One of those deans is Mac Caldwell, a 34-year-old divorced father of a toddler who is also lonely and discouraged about the sad state of things with his personal life.

Mac's first marriage had occurred when his girlfriend became pregnant and Mac felt compelled to marry her. Now they are divorced and she is difficult to deal with over the custody issues. She has taken to dropping off their son a day early, causing considerable difficulty for Mac with his work load, academic appointments, and class schedule. Callie offers to babysit in light of her former work experience in daycare centers and private babysitting. When this situation becomes a weekly thing, Mac and Callie become friends and eventually lovers.

It is now that Callie faces the need to let Kyle go and move on, and in Mac she believes she has found the man who can fill her heart and her life. Mac is a man who finds it difficult to express his feelings but he comes to know that Callie is a woman who has depth, maturity, and a compassionate heart. He knows that no matter what her former relationships may have been, he cannot even imagine his life without her. Her relationship with his son is also evidence of her ability to open her heart to anyone, even a child who is not her own.

This is a very nice novel that is really the "biography" of a relationship, one that began with pain and disappointment for both Callie and Mac but which blossomed into passion and love. It is also a novel that has a suspense strand as Callie and Mac both get involved in trying to solve the mystery of who is bringing drugs onto the campus. There are some surprises--actually big surprises--in the resolution of this mystery. There are definitely some significant stresses on Callie and Mac's marriage that involve the ex-wife, custody issues over Mac's son, some residual concerns on Mac's part over Callie's former love, the stress of Callie's class projects as she seeks to finish her master's degree, and the pressure that is upon Mac to fulfill his administrative responsbilities; but that is all part of this story of a relationship. Only in fairy tales do love relationships go smoothly. It is also a story of how both Callie and Mac must make some important personal decisions about how they will open themselves to one another, grow in their relationship, and allow room for each to be who they are. There is kindness, friendship, genuine caring and authentic loving here--the kind that is capable of withstanding the ups and downs that two people must endure as they are finding that easy place with one another.

I liked the people in this story--other than the bad guy's, of course. They were real and could have easily inhabited a modern university. They sounded very much like people we all know. Certainly the circle of support they formed around Callie as she was growing into her role as Mac's wife -- the Dean's wife role -- was quite profound. They weren't "other-worldly" but were the kind of friends and supporters we would all like to have.

This is the kind of love story that I like to read on a cool winter night here in So. California, wrapped in my grandmother's afghan and sitting in front of the fire. It is full of warm fuzzies and good feelings and may even remind some of us of our own experiences. That, IMHO, is a really good read. I give this novel a 4 out of 5 rating.