Returning to her Midwest roots, award-winning author Jane Kirkpatrick draws a page from her grandmother’s photo album to capture the interplay between shadow and light, temptation and faith that marks a woman’s pursuit of her dreams.
She took exquisite photographs,
but her heart was the true image exposed.
Fifteen-year-old Jessie Ann Gaebele loves nothing more than capturing a gorgeous Minnesota landscape when the sunlight casts its most mesmerizing shadows. So when F.J. Bauer hires her in 1907 to assist in his studio and darkroom, her dreams for a career in photography appear to find root in reality.
With the infamous hazards of the explosive powder used for lighting and the toxic darkroom chemicals, photography is considered a man’ s profession. Yet Jessie shows remarkable talent in both the artistry and business of running a studio. She proves less skillful, however, at managing her growing attraction to the very married Mr. Bauer.
This luminous coming-of-age tale deftly exposes the intricate shadows that play across every dream worth pursuing–and the irresistible light that beckons the dreamer on.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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Sexual Content - 1/5
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Violence - 0/5
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Language - 0/5
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Drugs and Alcohol - 0/5
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Summary
Overall I love this description on the back of the novel: \"One of the marvels of this novel is Kirkpatrick's uncanny ability to enter into the minds and hearts of many characters and inhabit them with such authority, generosity of spirit, and wisdom. You'll want to go slowly so you can savor each paragraph, each scene, each chapter.\" Jane Kirkpatrick writes amazing novels. One of her hallmarks is at she goes places and discusses situations that other Christian novel writers might write about, but they never delve into the emotional and spiritual in quite the same way as Kirkpatrick. In an author's note at the end, Kirkpatrick reveals that this novel is biographical history of her own grandmother which makes it all the more interestingI wish I had read that at the beginning! Ms. Kirkpatrick's historical research is impeccable. She even mentioned a wellknown female photographer from a small Missouri town in which some of my great grandparents lived as contemporaries of hers. It was terrific fun to learn about her, and it has put me on a mission to find out if she ever photographed my ancestors. (She was a real personI googled her!) This novel is an excellent read,
especially if photography is of interest to you.
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Sexual A young teen is attracted to her much older, 45 year old boss. The boss's marriage is dry and loveless. Both give into the attraction, yet without, as the book puts it: defiling the marriage bed.