12/15/02

More than just an interesting story of two women coming to terms with their lives, Trip to Paradise is a book about courage, romance, integrity, sorrow, and personal growth.

After a brief background of the family, the main story opens in the 1950s when Liz, disappointed in a failed love relationship, returns home to the grandmother who raised her. At 25, Liz is the youngest of five children. She was separated from her siblings at age four and now determines to meet her brothers and sister. The story of her reconnection with them is both uplifting and wistfully sad; not every meeting goes as well as Liz would have liked.

After making contact with each of her brothers and her sister, Liz decides to start her life anew by creating a home for herself in Key West.

Interwoven with Liz’s journey into her future is the story of Grandmother Nellanor Doherty Steele. Many years ago, as a girl of sixteen, Nellanor found herself homeless and pregnant after having been raped by the wealthy son of a local family. This violence is an underlying factor in the motivations of Nellanor throughout the book. Sensitive toward rape victims and their families, the author successfully shows the long range effects of rape without becoming sensational or graphic.

Nellanor reaches out and reconnects with both her past, in the form of her sister and mother, and her future, in the form of her adult grandchildren.

Meanwhile, Liz finds both romance and danger in Key West due to a young man named Juan Robertson. Juan is involved in an underground group seeking to replace the harsh Cuban government. The author knows her material and the information on Cuba is presented clearly. Juan cultivates Liz as an ideal (and unknowing) courier of some important information he needs smuggled into Cuba. He’s not overly concerned about her growing love for him, until he finds himself unexpectedly returning the feeling! The variety of tensions between Liz and Juan suddenly move this book from a gentle family history to intriguing political espionage.

The end of this book is handled with grace as the author leaves no "loose ends" and yet allows the characters to continue to play out their lives beyond the stage of the book’s pages.