Hats off to Gina Holmes for a spectacular debut novel! I picked up Crossing Oceans when it was a Kindle freebie in November and read the whole story in one day, almost unheard of for me in recent years. What’s so special about this book?
It is the first person present tense story of Jenny Lucas, a young single mother with a huge dilemma. She’s dying of cancer and needs to make amends with her estranged father and possibly with Isabella’s father, who never knew he had a daughter. She needs someone to love this little girl and care for her when she’s gone in just a few months.
But Jenny and her dad still butt heads constantly, and her ex-boyfriend from a wealthy family, David, is an even bigger jerk than she remembered. He’s married, and he and his wife have been unable to have children. When David and Lindsey realize the situation with Bella, David’s grasping fingers reach for the child.
Jenny is out of options. Who can she trust to cherish her most precious treasure? Will the long-standing feud between her dad and David’s father, both forceful, hotheaded men, be smoothed over? Her time is very limited, and she needs to choose what’s best for Bella, not herself, before she crosses over the ocean of death.
Yes, it’s a tearjerker. Yes, it deals with material many of us prefer not to think about. But Gina Holmes winds her way through this young mother’s last days in a sensitive, poignant manner that kept me spellbound. Please read this book. It cannot leave you unchanged.
In 1998, Gina Holmes began her career penning articles and short stories. In 2005 she founded the influential literary blog, Novel Journey. She holds degrees in science and nursing and currently resides with her husband and children in Southern Virginia. Her debut novel, Crossing Oceans, released April/May 2010 with Tyndale House Publishers, and I found out on Monday that it won an Inspy Award for General and Literary Fiction. Well deserved.
