The Dragons of Alsace Farm by Laurie Lewis

July 1, 2016 | 1 Comment
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The Dragons of Alsace Farm by Laurie LewisThe Dragons of Alsace Farm
Author: Laurie Lewis
Genres: Contemporary Romance, Women's Fiction
Format: eBook, Print
Pages: 376
Date: July 1, 2016
Publisher: Indie

Fears and secrets are the dragons we each must face…

In need of his own redemption, Noah Carter finally confronts his childhood hero, the once-beloved uncle who betrayed him. Instead of vengeance, he offers forgiveness, also granting Uncle John a most curious request—for Noah to work on the ramshackle farm of Agnes Deveraux Keller, a French WWII survivor with dementia.

Despite all Agnes has lost, she still has much to teach Noah. But the pair’s unique friendship is threatened when Tayte, Agnes’s estranged granddaughter, arrives to claim a woman whose circumstances and abilities are far different from those of the grandmother she once knew.

Items hidden in Agnes’s attic raise painful questions about Tayte’s dead parents, steeling Tayte’s determination to save Agnes, even if it requires her to betray the very woman she came to save, and the secret her proud grandmother has guarded for seventy years.

The issue strains the fragile trust between Tayte and Noah, who now realizes Tayte is fighting her own secrets, her own dragons. Weighed down by past guilt and failures, he feels ill-equipped to help either woman, until he remembers Agnes’s lessons about courage and love. In order to save Agnes, the student must now become the teacher, helping Tayte heal—for Agnes’s sake, and for his.

Rating: Moderate. Some substance use; mild kissing; mild language; mild sensuality; moderate violence or horror.

[bctt tweet=”Dear John meets Still Alice in THE DRAGONS OF ALSACE FARM #family #aging #WW2 @laurielclewis “]

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About Laurie Lewis

Laurie Lewis

Laurie Lewis lives in Maryland with her husband Tom. She writes romance and women’s fiction as Laurie Lewis and historical fiction as L.C. Lewis. She is a RONE Award Winner and the winner of two New Apple Literary Awards—the 2017 Inspirational Fiction Medallion and 2018’s Best New Fiction Award. She is also a BRAGG Medallion honoree, and she was twice named a Whitney Awards and USA Best Books Awards finalist.


One response to “The Dragons of Alsace Farm by Laurie Lewis

  1. Maria

    I was intrigued by the title of this book. It had been on my kindle along with 200+ other books for a while so I had forgotten what it was about when I decided to read it. I didn’t look up the description before I started so all of it was a surprise to me. How are there dragons on a farm? Soooo many dragons in this book.

    The story is full of angst and pain in people who have had difficult lives and been betrayed by those who should have loved them. For Noah it was physical abuse from parents followed by inadvertent betrayal from the beloved uncle who would have been his savior. For Tayte it was neglect from her parents leaving her with an inability to love and trust. For Agnes it was betrayal from the man she loved in her youth and betrayal of her mind in her old age. Living with the consequences of how others treated them as well as their own choices were the great dragons they faced.

    I loved that Noah and Tayte both learned that they didn’t have to be the victim of their circumstances forever. They could decide what they wanted their future to be. And even then it would be hard work and there may be a step backward every so often but determination to succeed would help them through each trial. Agnes learned to accept help from others and that she wanted to be needed and loved which would give her the desire to keep living.

    Noah’s uncle learned the hard way that ignoring symptoms is not productive and that family is more important than anything.

    One of the questions at the end of the book asks which decline is worse, the body or the mind. And how might that answer be different for the person verses their family. I suspect it is which ever one you are dealing with. Alzheimer’s slowly robbed my mother of everything. As her brain stopped functioning properly she lost all reason, her memories,and her physical abilities too until her body just stopped functioning and she died. For me, dementia is the worst. But if I were losing my husband to cancer, I’d feel like that decline is the worst. I had always believed that Alzheimer’s is harder on the family than the person with it but I’ve learned that isn’t true either. I feel like my mom spent 95% of her time being either extremely scared, angry or confused. Sometimes all three. No one can tell me that feeling those extremes all the time wouldn’t be hard.

    I had two problems with the book, both of which I can excuse. One, I felt no real bridge in the romance between not getting along and being in love. But attraction is attraction even if it starts negatively so I’m willing to believe the story. Two, I have a hard time reading stories that deal with dementia/alzheimer’s. I watched my mom struggle from a distance for many years and then the last 5 years of her life, up close and personal as I became the overseer of her care. So I naturally compare my experiences to those written in a story. I find myself saying, “it didn’t happen like that” although some things were exactly like that. English was my mother’s second language and I found her reverting to her mother tongue more frequently as her condition worsened. My mom always wanted to go home even when she was home. Home is a safe place. People with dementia want to feel safe. But I can excuse the differences in the book because the decline doesn’t affect everyone the same way even if some things are exactly the same. And by the time I had mom near me and saw her daily, she was further along in the decline than Agnes was so moments of lucidity were not so frequent.

    This book is Christian lit but it is pretty light. Mostly it is just Noah beginning to trust God enough to pray.

    In this book there are hard themed topics, references to previous drug use, abuse, self-hate, a little violence from cops, references to abuse from inmates in jail, and so forth.

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