After he’s forced to sell the family farm he’s labored on his whole life, 63-year-old Gerrit Laninga doesn’t know what to do with himself. He sacrificed everything for the land–his time, his health, his family–with nothing to show for it but bitterness, regret, and two grown children who want nothing to do with him.
Fifteen-year-old Rae Walters has growing doubts and fears about The Plan–the detailed blueprint for high school that will help her follow in her lawyer father’s footsteps. She’s always been committed to The Plan, but now that the pressure to succeed is building, what was supposed to unite her family in purpose, may end up tearing it apart.
When their paths cross just as they each need a friend the most, Gerrit’s and Rae’s lives begin to change in unexpected ways. Can they discover together what really matters in life and learn it’s never too late for a second chance?
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Drugs and Alcohol - 1/5
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Summary
From: Rebecca Maney
Book Title: The Sowing Season
Book Author: Katie Powner
What do you like about this book:
"I'm sorry, I didn't think anyone . . . . . . . cared about this place."
Gerritt Laninga has just made the hardest decision of his sixty-three year existence seem easy to everyone else. Having devoted all of his adult life to his dairy cattle, he is now at odds with everything and everyone who isn't a cow or a tractor. . . . selling the family farm lifted one set of burdens only to replace them with another kind. When he meets a young neighbor hanging out in the deserted barn on his personal property, his plans, or lack thereof, begin to incrementally shift.
Rae Walters is the perfect student, the perfect friend, the perfect daughter . . . she is following the perfect plan . . . . graduate at the top of her class, slide effortlessly through college into law school and become a lawyer, just like her father. There's only one problem. She's terrified of driving. What if she can't pass the test? When she meets a crotchety old neighbor in his deserted barn, her plans begin to incrementally shift.
What an absolutely refreshing "coming of age" meets "too young to retire" story! Rae longs to know what she is really meant to do and Gerritt is grieved over what he has already done. Their conversations and inter-actions with family and friends was incredibly humorous at times (picture a six foot four dairy farmer trying on skinny jeans) and heart breaking in the interim. For surely, "let us not become weary in well doing, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up". It's all a matter of what we sow.
I received a copy of this book from the author and publisher. The opinions stated above are entirely my own.