Jewel by Brett Lott

(535 pages)



In the backwoods of Mississippi, Jewel and her husband Leston are blessed with five healthy children. All this changes with the birth of Brenda Kay in 1943. This is the story of a woman's devotion to a child who is both her burden and her blessing.

This was beautifully written and tackled some big issues in the south of the 1940's and onwards.
I liked some of the characters, but the story was a wee bt too slow moving for me.
Jewel was a fabulous mother, putting the welfare of her kids before everything else, but I couldnt help feeling that she was wraping Brenda Kay in cotton wool...... maybe it was because it was the 1940s :s.