Can we learn from our ancestral past? Do our relatives’ behaviors help mold our own? In “Unexpected Gifts” that is precisely what happens to Sonia, a confused college student, heading for addictions and forever choosing the wrong man. Searching for answers, she begins to read her family’s diaries and journals from America’s past: the Vietnam War, Woodstock, and Timothy Leary era; Tupperware … parties, McCarthyism, and Black Power; the Great Depression, dance marathons, and Eleanor Roosevelt; the immigrant experience and the Suffragists. Back and forth the book journeys, linking yesteryear with modern life until finally, by understanding her ancestors’ hardships and faults, she gains enough clarity to make some right choices.
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Unexpected Gifts is rich, multi-layered quilt of stories from the past. Sonia observes how her father, Sam, has changed after the injury he sustained in Vietnam. “Once her hero, she looked down on him now, thinking how old and fragile he seemed. Just a mass of angry words. Where did that begin?”
Her mother, Lily, opens the attic latch where an old steamer trunk, draped with a cobweb, stands at the far end. Opening its lid uncovers piles of letters, journals, and old mementos, all holding treasured memories waiting to be explored. Sonia opens her eyes to the ways stories from the past contrast and compare with events in her own life.
Together with Sonia, open the treasure chest. Delve into a past. Listen to old diaries, giving first-hand accounts of the civil rights struggle, events in the Vietnam War, and the feministic movement. “I was out in front of those iron gates, holding up a sign that said, Mr. President, how long must women wait for Liberty?”
These stories are unexpected gifts not only for Sonia but for us too. Highly recommended. Five stars.
Wow, this is one of the books you don’t want to miss! “Unexpected Gifts” is not your usual love story; it’s a complex mosaic of memories, emotions, and feelings, all interconnected and interrelated and creating a unique world that you can’t help but feel immersed into.
Sonia is a psychology student struggling with OCD, even though she doesn’t want to admit it to herself. One day, visiting her father, who was left handicapped after the injury that he sustained in Vietnam, Sonia comes across “a treasure chest” together with her mother Lily, and soon her travel down memory lane begins, uncovering family secrets and providing so much needed insights into her own problems.
Slowly, day by day, diary after diary, Sonia starts understanding herself more and more, and not without her fellow student Harry’s help. I absolutely loved how the author made Sonia relate to her ancestors’ fears, troubles, and shortcomings, and make her own right decisions based on their experience.
The events of the past, described in the diaries, are obviously meticulously researched and deal with many important themes, such as feministic movement, civil rights struggle, immigrants’ struggles, the Vietnam War and many more. All in all, “Unexpected Gifts” is a true gem that I’ll certainly be re-reading in the future. Great work!
UNEXPECTED GIFTS by S.R. Mallery is a wonderful glimpse into the past and how that past and her ancestors affects the lead character – Sonia.
In the present you have Sonia a confused college student of psychology who has OCD traits with a want to be rock star boyfriend, another in a long line of men wrong for her, and her parents – a father that became disabled in the Vietnam war whose only solace seems to be in a bottle of rum and a mother whose at her wits end tending to a most times ungrateful invalid.
In the past you have Sonia’s relatives who lived through such time defining events as the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Tupperware parties, Black Power, the Great Depression, the immigration experience and Suffragist and left a record of it through the written word in journals, diaries and souvenirs all stock piled in a chest in the attic of Sonia’s childhood home.
In the midst of learning about her relatives past through the contents of the chest, Sonia meets a man in her class that intrigues her mind, makes her heart beat a little faster and treats her as if she is special. Harry makes her wonder if she deserves more than the rock star who is a great taker but never a giver unless it benefits him. We get to meet Martha, Harry’s friend who is a sweet girl confined to a wheelchair. She may have difficulty speaking, but when she talks her sweet innocence and her great insight on life will light up anyone’s world.
Can Sonia find the answers she needs in her past? Can she break the cycle by learning from the past and find the happy life she so wants? Can Sonia find true love and realize that sex doesn’t mean love and that love is what sex is all about? Can Martha show Sonia’s father that just being in a wheelchair doesn’t define your whole existence and spread a little optimism into his life? Do Harry and Sonia have more in common than either of them know about? Can Sonia and Harry find true happiness or has Sonia made too many bad decisions in the past for it to happen?
S. R. Mallery does a fabulous job of combining the past and the present in this dual timeline book. The transitions between eras is smooth and fits in with the rhythm of the story. She dealt with difficult subject manner tastefully and in a way that this generations and those to come can learn from so that the past doesn’t have to repeat itself all the while entertaining us and keeping us turning pages.
UNEXPECTED GIFTS is a book I would definitely recommend to history buffs, those that love a wonderful romance filled in with history events and to those that just love a great story. I for one can’t wait for the opportunity to explore more books by this author.