DiDonovan

It's rare to find a story line that is narrated from the afterlife and follows the reflections and circumstances of a minister's wife who has expired from terminal cancer, but who follows through (beyond death) with a plan to reunite a biological mother and her granddaughter. Such an endeavor involves faith, love, and interconnections between different worlds, and represents an exploration of the lasting ramifications of decisions and choices.

Thus, one prerequisite to enjoying The Damnable Legacy would be an interest in matters of the heart, an acceptance of afterlife possibilities, and a willingness to appreciate explorations that range from destiny and love to a narrator who has set the stage for a possible reunion and resolution, watching her plan evolve from another realm of consciousness.

In chapters that juxtapose a mountain-climbing adventurer with a distant granddaughter who repeatedly injures herself as she struggles with her uncertain home life and future, the narrator who pulls together both lives is an ethereal being whose efforts have set into motion circumstances to connect two broken lives. All this is well explained in the second chapter, after the presentation draws readers into these two disparate lives.

Another plus to this saga is that nothing is cut and dried. Protagonist Frankie, who struggles with her home life, and Lynn, addicted to climbing the highest mountains in the world except the one that looms largest in her heart, are joined by blood, biology, and unresolved troubles. In the course of learning about their different lives and observing the forces at work to bring them together, readers are treated to a series of revelations that are emotionally involving and revealing.

At times the observational status of the narrator slips itself into one life or the other - and this creates a satisfyingly different approach that adds a rich blurring of boundaries between the three dissimilar personalities.

Engrossing, winning, and compelling, The Damnable Legacy uses poetic language, an unusual narrative approach, and compelling scenes to move between the beliefs, events, forces and choices that shape both Lynn and her granddaughter Frankie's lives, exploring how each is lost in different ways, and how they come together.

The result is a story that is hard to put down and which follows faith and how it withstands even the most adversarial of conditions to blossom from the storms of life, evoking connections and (ultimately) forgiveness.