Hope Jones, married to a physician, battling a chronic disease, and living in rural Nebraska with three children, is one day tragically swept away by a tornado and never seen again. Many years later, when their father also dies somewhat tragically by a weather event, her grown children are still struggling to make sense of their lives.

This is a long novel that seemed to have a lot of potential. It's not every day you come across a book about someone being swept away by a tornado. The fact that Hope's disappearance/death was referred to numerous times in the story not by either of these terms, but instead as 'When Hope "went up"' seemed especially endearing. The story is told from varied points of view, not only from each of her children, but from Hope herself in the form of diary entries, a few times by a few extraneous characters, and even from the souls (?) of those in the community who had previously died. And the timelines switch back and forth between Hope's earlier married years, the years when her health began to decline, and the present day of her children. All three of Hope's children seem to be struggling in some way or another, but I didn't really feel as though this had anything to do directly with the fact that they'd lost their mother at a younger age. There were times when the story became bogged down with excessive detail, as though the author were trying too hard with descriptive content. Though there were some quirky character traits with some of the characters, I never really felt a true connection with any of Hope's children. The town of Emlyn Springs was almost a character in itself, and I think maybe I most enjoyed that aspect of the story. I don't think this was a bad book, but I often wondered where the story was going and exactly what the author wanted the reader to come away with. It seemed like it had the potential to be more than it was. ( )

The last 100 pages were okay, the rest was annoying, boring, repetitious, and waaaaay to long. The attempts to add magic to the story were leaden, the characters were whiny and unlikeable and worst of all, they were stereotypically damaged. This would have made an excellent short story! ( )

The Jones family lives in Emlyn Springs, Nebraska. There are tornadoes there once in awhile.This is a story about families and small towns, love and trusting that love. Good story-telling, a good read. ( )

I loved this book & definitely recommend it. It’s a distinctly North American kind of magic realism, with more spacious rhythms and an underlying allegiance to spiritualism. It’s centered in a small Nebraska town with a strong Welsh identity. Everyone sings, and old traditions around death and singing have prevailed. The town itself is a character – personable, stubborn, exasperating, eccentric, lovable. The weather is itself a very strong character! All the human characters – both living and dead - are beautifully drawn and all their stories worth telling. ( )

You have to get through the first section that describes the Dead Fathers and Dead Mothers and sounds eerie and strange. Then you get pulled in to the events surrounding three siblings, their mother, their father's common-law wife, and their small town. The characters appear flat, at first, but they wonderfully break through their stereotypes to reveal a lot of depth. The narrative takes on flashblacks through the mother's diary entries, but mostly follows the lives of the siblings as they live out the year following their father's death.

I enjoyed the book immensely. Nothing too heavy, but not trivial, either. ( )