Author: CS Lakin
Pages: 283
Format: Kindle/ebook
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Book Source: Provided by Author
Category: Contemporary Fiction, Mystery
Style: Intense, intelligent and compelling mystery
Synopsis from Amazon:
A happily married man with three small children decides one day he no longer wants to live. He gives himself leukemia and nine months later is dead.
This is the conundrum Lisa Sitteroff is determined to solve regarding her dead father—the tale her mother, Ruth, told Lisa and her two brothers, Rafferty and Neal, throughout their childhood. But Lisa, now thirty and watching Raff suffer from the ravages of bipolar illness, believes if she can solve this puzzle, she might somehow save her brother. For Raff’s pain is intrinsically tied up with feelings of parental abandonment. . . .
Conundrum explores the rocky landscape of betrayal and truth, asking whether a search for truth is worth the price, and showing how separating from toxic family members might sometimes be the only recourse for survival. Lisa pays a high price for truth, but in the end finds it worthwhile. read more . . .
My Take:
I first read Ms. Lakin's writing in a guest blog post on the subject of Christian Fiction: Is It Effective? I wandered over to her author page, and finally to Live, Write, Thrive, her blog for writers and editors. By then, I was hooked and simply had to get my hands on her work. In addition to her bang-up writing advice, her proposition that "Christian fiction" can and should reflect a wide world view and reach a broad range of audiences resonated with me. To quote:I feel a pressing calling from God to reach out to the lost in the world, to those who have no hope and do not know a plan of salvation has been executed on their behalf and is being offered to them. I look at my writing as 100% ministry, and my efforts and prayers are all directed toward those ends. I take the views of authors like Flannery O’Conner and Madeline L’Engle who felt strongly that their writing should honestly and even painfully reflect the true state of the human condition, of sin, and all its ugliness without censoring. from Nikole Hahn's Journal, Christian Fiction: Is It EffectiveMs. Lakin does exactly that with Conundrum, a story about the dysfunctional Sitterhoff family with an unhappy past: Lisa, the daughter and care-taker, all things to all people; Jeremy, her long-suffering husband; Rafferty, the eldest son with way too much baggage and debilitating, life-threatening bipolar disorder; Neal, the irresponsible baby of the family; and Ruth, the matriarch incapable of tenderness who uses wealth and a finely honed talent for inflicting guilt to manipulate her grown children.
