A Word with You Press always keeps this in mind:  before we were writers, we were readers.  In fact, we became writers because we were readers – we fell in love with stories, we became enchanted with language, enamored of the written word, and, eventually, obsessed with filling the blank page.  So . . . what have you read lately?  Send us your book reviews.  If you’re bold enough to write one, we’re bold enough to post it.  Julie Weinstein has done just that.  Here’s her first review for A Word with You Press:

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Widow’s Walk by Kenneth Weene
Reviewed by Julie Weinstein

The book opens with Mary, a widow who takes on the burden of nursing her son, Sean, who came back from the Vietnam War both mentally and physically shattered.  Mary wears her despair like a badge and shield. It’s what she knows, and it is all-consuming as she shuts herself off from the world. But Mary does change slowly, through her children. Sean finds a feisty caregiver, Jem, who challenges Sean’s core view of himself and causes him to question whether he wants an independent life – the very notion Sean didn’t think possible before, and one, ironically, that Mary didn’t dare.

Sean learns how to live as an independent, handicapped person.  Emboldened by Sean’s progress Mary, embarks on a journey of knowledge at the university and the school of life, where she questions her strict Catholicism and the beliefs that have kept her from letting others into her life and of letting go of past hurts.

Almost simultaneously, Mary falls in love, and so does Sean. Encouraged by her son’s blossoming family and inner strength, Mary tries love with Arnie, a college professor.  Their relationship has passion, true togetherness, and a partnership; everything that Mary didn’t have with her husband. Yet Mary has her doubts, questioning if she can and should give love – and, most importantly, life – a chance.

It’s a burden and a curse she doesn’t carry alone, for her daughter, Kathleen, has her own grief that she can’t seem to shake.  Hurt by a broken marriage and the realization that she can’t bear children, Kathleen cares for the dying at a hospice center when she’s too afraid of living. When she finds tragedy again, Mary takes on her burden, wearing the widow’s coat ‘til the very end, even when her children have so bravely and eloquently dared to embrace life.