Growing Season (Avalon Romance)

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Summary: Gentle mid-western love story
Review: Growing Season by Mike Gaherty review by Kathy MaloneyGrowing Season is Mike Gaherty's first novel since retiring as a teacher of creative writing and journalism at Central High School. A small Iowa farm in the present is the setting for this midwestern romance. The story is gentle and refreshing. Readers who seek mayhemand murder must look somewhere else, thankfully. Those who take up the book will meet everyday people living ordinary lives in the familiar Midwest. Katie Rourke, the protagonist, is not just a risk-taker who makes decisions without always seeking advice from others. She is our daughter or niece or sister as we recognize traits of those we know and love best in her character. Gram is the grandmother readers will remember as their own, or will wish they could. She bakes apple pies, does embroidery and is as lively mentally as her granddaughter. Gram works to push Katie and Katie's former high-school sweetheart, David Cairn together at every opportunity. Only in the Midwest would someone's grandmother try to do this and make it work so believably. Katie returns to Willow Grove after taking a semester's leave of absence from her teaching. The memory of her parent's accident and funeral, only a month past, still is a fresh pain. Soon, Katie learns from the family banker that the farm and land will probably have to be sold to cover debts incurred by her late father. Katie is more than a red-haired, English teacher in Rockford, Illinois. She is a stubborn, optimistic, young woman...the type of person who should never be told she cannot accomplish something as this only serves as a challenge which must be met. Katie rather hastily decides she will leave her life of teaching and run the farm to keep the land in the family. As a young woman in her mid-twenties whose world has been teaching English, Katie finds few people believe she can accomplish the task by herself. David Carin, her neighbor and antagonist, is another challenge which Katie must somehow come to terms with. If only her memories of David as her first love wouldn't keep getting in the way. This story seems effortless because it is so full of natural people and normal events. The weather, the odd character or two, death, friendship, family, hard work, and love are those things which those who live in the Midwest take for granted because they know them so well. Reading this tender story of people who face down their fears and make life work, is like listening to stories about family members or spending time with a well-known friend. Growing Season by Mike Gaherty.