The Three Mrs Parkers

by Joan Medlicott

The characters include:
the elderly Mrs. Parker, Winifred, the mother-in-law
the middle Mrs. Parker, Zoe, the daughter-in-law, and
the youngest Mrs. Parker, Kathryn, Zoe’s daughter who was married but reverted to her maiden name
in name only, Stephen Parker, son of Winifred, husband of Zoe.

The “why” of the story is two women who don’t know each other but are bonded together by a son/husband must now learn to get along. Each one blames the other for the son’s/husband’s death yet now they find they need each other.

This is a “… story about three generations of women who find their way past old hurts and losses to understanding, forgiveness and love … about family, friendship, and where the two meet” (Amazon editorial review). Getting past the old hurts and losses was way too easy for these three women. Maybe there are some that can get past them easily, but three within one circle of friendship or within one family just doesn’t happen in real life. Finding new friendships easily does happen.

For women, and possibly older teens, this is light reading. Forgiveness is its theme and as such, the hardcover copy I have has discussion questions about how the story handled the theme at the end of the book. I thought it interesting that the author had a couple in the story who seemed like true Christians, but the Parkers and the other people in the story were not, and the wedding takes place with a Unitarian pastor.

The crisis comes when all their lives are threatened. But after the crisis was over I felt it took too much time to wrap up and close the story. The author needed to get the three women re-coupled.

The author wrote this book according to the “rules”: have a crisis and have a reason for everything that happens. This caused the story to not always be flowing forward, but often stopping to answer the question, “why,” and doing a referral backward in time.

Unless you’re looking for a light read I don’t recommend this book.

290 pages, easy reading.
ISBN-10: 0739451103
ISBN-13: 978-0739451106

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