Guest Review: The Ninth Step – Barbara Taylor Sissel

A novel of timeless love, loss, and family and the steps we must take for forgiveness.

Livie Saunders is fluent in the language of flowers; she taught the meanings to her fiancé, Cotton O’Dell, but then Cotton vanished without explanation on their wedding day forcing Livie to learn the language of desolation. Heartbroken, she buries her wedding gown beneath a garden pond and she resolves to move on, but there are nights when she slips . . . into a sequined red dress and a pair of stiletto heels, a stranger’s bed, a little anonymous oblivion that is not without consequence. Still, she recovers a semblance of ordinary life and imagines herself content. After all, Cotton told her to forget about him. Livie even maintains a friendship with Delia, Cotton’s mother, whom he also abandoned without a word of explanation.

Then, six years later, an unsigned card and a bouquet of irises signal Cotton’s presence, but his reunion with Livie isn’t as joyous as he had hoped. While she struggles to forgive him, Livie can’t hide her own past and how she has changed since Cotton left.

Meanwhile, Cotton is still haunted by the crime that caused him to flee…a crime for which the legal clock is still ticking. For a moment, it seems they can both forget the past and rebuild their lives together, but then Cotton goes missing again.

Time telescopes, avenues of escape close, and as lives hang in the balance, choice teeters between mercy and revenge. And a decision that will take only a moment will carry the consequences of a lifetime.

THE NINTH STEP is a story of redemption, of being brought to your knees to face a monstrous error and somehow finding the strength to make it right. Even if that effort breaks your heart, endangers your freedom, and ultimately threatens your life.

Series:
Release Date:  August 30, 2011
Publisher:  Barbara Taylor Sissel
Source:  NetGalley
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Reviewer’s Thoughts:

An incredibly touching story, The Ninth Step shows you what happens when alcoholism takes hold of your life and has the power to change it within the blink of an eye.  Livie and Cotton are engaged to be married.  They’re happy and content.  That is until Cotton disappears.  Years go by, and Livie is forced to try and move on after Cotton broke her heart.  Just as she’s starting to move on, Cotton reappears, asking her to forgive him for his mistakes, revealing his reason for leaving, and hoping that the two of them can reconnect, as he still loves her.  But Livie must try to find it in her heart to forgive him for what he did to her, and for what he’s done to so many others with one decision that changed everything.

This book was unbelievably gripping and raw, mapping out the horrors of what happens when you make the decision to drive drunk, and how that decision can change your life within a matter of seconds.  Cotton made that decision and it cost another driver their life.  Instead of sticking around and accepting the consequences, he runs, leaving Livie with a broken heart, and a family without a loved one and with no idea who was responsible for their loss.  But when Cotton comes back in to town, he’s faced with his “Ninth Step” of recovery – to make amends.  Cotton is determined to do so, and with that brings his troubled past, his road to alcoholism, the lives he’s destroyed (including his own) and his need to take responsibility for his bad decisions.

It was difficult to read this book.  The author has created a story that is so heart breaking and real that it hits home in so many ways.  If you’ve ever had someone you loved that has had to deal with any kind of addiction, it will affect you deeply, touching on the sensitivities that come with the disease.  The characters are beautifully written, and the author’s ability to take a person that’s hurt so many others and make you feel sympathy for him is something to be applauded.

Simply incredible, this book by Barbara Sissel is one I’ll recommend for years to come.  Just make sure you’ve got a BIG box of Kleenex.