Review: Home Safe, By Elizabeth Berg

Home Safe: A Novel by Elizabeth Berg


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Helen Ames's doesn't know what to do with herself after the sudden death of her husband Dan. She finds herself unable to write and becomes more and more dependent on her 27 year old daughter, Tessa. Then one day she receives a call that will completely change her world. She and her husband had always saved money for their retirement, but she is shocked to find out that he made a very large withdrawal before his death. Now she must find a way to support herself and she takes a job doing something she had never really wanted to do, as a writing teacher. Much to her surprise, it will turn out to be more rewarding than she possibly could have imagined.
She will teach a class of unlikely characters, who will not only learn something about writing a good novel; they will teach her some very important lessons in return. I really enjoyed this book as I have all of Elizabeth Berg's books. If you're a true book lover, you'll appreciate how she summed it up on page 229 when Helen Ames speaks to a group of students at a book reading. Here are a few quotes:

"...while the author may describe in some detail how a character looks, it is the reader's imagination that completes the image, making it his or her own.....She talked, too, about how books educate and inpire, and how they soothe souls-"like comfort food without calories", she said.
....She talked about how people complain that they don't have time to read...."Books don't take time away from us," she said. "They give it back."

I completely agree with that statement; time reading a good book is time well spent.


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