Book Review: Blessed are the Pure in Heart, by Jean Rosenow

Blessed are the Pure in Heart
Jean Rosenow
ISBN 9781477624593 
Reviewed by Yancy Caruthers, The Pen and the Sword

 

For anyone who has served as a caregiver to a person with special needs, or even lived in a special needs family, life can be robust and vigorous, or sucked from one’s very bones, and it will vary with the given day.  Jean Rosenow’s “Blessed are the Pure in Heart” is a work of fiction about one such family unit, Emma Prater cares for her younger brother Rodney, who has Down Syndrome.

While not presented as the protagonist, Rodney quickly becomes the story’s most powerful character.  His intentions are pure, as are his frustrations.  Unbeknownst to him, his very existence has caused his sister to believe that she will never find love.  The first few chapters are a little clunky with regional phonetics, but by chapter three there is momentum seldom seen in a new author.  As events interlock and unfold, a possibility is set in motion that turns the pages effortlessly.

I must confess two things to this reader.  First, I have known the author for 25 years - since I was a teenager – her four sons, each with his own brand of genius, are close enough to my age that I spent a good deal of time on the farm that she tended alone, after she became a widow at a young age.  The loneliness that Emma experiences in the story is probably no stranger to Rosenow, and neither is the farm and surrounding rural area that sets the story – she stops short of naming my hometown in South Missouri near West Plains, but there are enough sly details that I can almost smell the river near the farmhouse, or hear the screen door slap closed with the sound of a metal spring.

Secondly, my brother is a special needs person, a preschooler trapped for the duration in a body now fifty.  That bias may have worked against Rosenow to some degree, as I found myself very critical of Emma in her role of caregiver.  She seemed like a Pollyanna at first, but as the author rounded her off with touches of loneliness and doubt, she became real. 
     
As the story approached denouement, I found myself wondering how she would end it – too soon, and I would be left hanging, but too late, and it would fall flat, or lead squarely into a sequel, which has annoyed me since Twilight.  I was pleasantly surprised when it ended precisely where it should have.

As I finished off “Blessed are the Pure in Heart,” I found myself hoping to see more from Jean Rosenow in the future - one colorful secondary character in particular has numerous possibilities, but she would have to call it "Blessed are the Old and Grumpy."  I hope she runs with it.




The work, "Blessed are the Pure in Heart"  is available on Amazon.com by clicking one of the above links to the title.