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Mulberry Park
Judy Duarte

Kensington, 2008 - 272 pages

average customer review:based on 9 reviews
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   highly recommended  highly recommended



Real people in a real world

I've just finished reading Mulberry Park by Judy Duarte. It may be the first Christian novel in quite a while to move me almost to tears. It's set in the area round a small park, where people who hardly talk to each other are bound to turn out to be neighbors. Over time, the good, the bad and the indifferent prove to be friends as well. The story centers on a young girl who's lost her parents and a middle-aged woman who's lost her child. Somewhere along the way the woman also lost her faith, but the child has kept hers and starts writing letters to God, which she persuades a fellow park-player to hide in a tree. Then God answers.

In a small neighborhood, coincidences are inevitable, and there's never any feeling of the characters being manipulated in this book. Each event arises naturally out of its own situation, and the characters build on their own shaky foundations of mistakes and mistrust. But somehow there's a feeling, as in any good story--and in the faith of a little girl who writes letters to God--that life's not entirely random. Death's not the end, and hope is never lost.

I cannot imagine the pain of losing a child, though Judy Duarte describes it with great poignancy and sympathy. I cannot imagine losing a beloved spouse, a child losing a parent, family losing home and livelihood. But life can be built on losses as well as on gains; hope is built on forgiveness, and forgiveness on faith.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't God who wrote an answer to Analisa's letter. But it's God who writes his name on our hearts and his healing on our lives. And Mulberry Park is a beautiful image of how that healing might look.



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Mulberry Park

Excellent book.........its a feel good story right from the start. Beautifully written! You won't regret reading this one.









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Fast wholesome read

At first I thought this book would be boring and somewhat predictable and while it was in a way, by the end of the book I was wrapped in warmth that filled me like a warm cup of hot chocolate. I cried and was glad that I read it. The story of Claire and the loss of her son were real and filled with raw emotions. The best part of the story was the way the other characters all interacted. This is a great feel good novel.






What an amazing story!

A young girl who lost both her parents...

A young boy who lost his mother to cancer and his father to jail...

A woman who lost her young son to an accident and her husband to divorce...

A man who lost his wife and his stepsons...

A woman who lost her husband to jail and divorce...

Their lives and the lives of others entwine to bring healing to hurting souls.


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A Fabulous Book

If you're looking for a book with strong black and white deliniations of right and wrong, this isn't the one. If you're looking for a an uplifting book about characters on individual journeys of redemption, this one is a must have. Analisa is a child who wants simple answers to the hard questions, and her letter to God puts into motion the events that unfold in the story, each thread tugging at the heartstrings. While reading this book, I smiled, I worried for the well being of each of the characters, and I cried at the tangled mess of the climax.

This is a heart-warming story you'll remember long after you put this book down. I can't wait to read this author's next book!


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reviews: page 1, 2



Every letter deserves a reply--even when the questions it contains are difficult to answer. In Judy Duarte's heartwarming and inspiring novel, a woman shattered by grief responds to a little girl's urgent note to God and sets in motion a chain of events that helps to heal the lives of all those around her, in wholly unexpected ways...

Each day after work, Claire Harper drives to Mulberry Park and jogs for miles, hoping to find a respite from her sadness. It's a futile effort, until the evening a letter falls from its hiding place in a nearby tree. Inside the bright pink envelope emblazoned with the words "To God From Analisa" is a note written by a seven-year-old girl, urging God to look after her parents in Heaven and help those she loves on Earth. On impulse, Claire writes back, hoping to preserve Analisa's innocent belief in answered prayers--even if Claire lost her own faith when her young son was killed in a hit-and-run accident three years earlier.

Since that day, Claire has watched numbly as her life lost its meaning and her marriage dissolved, unwilling and unable to engage with the world around her. But Analisa's letters gradually draw Claire out of her cocoon and into the companionship of other Mulberry Park regulars--all, in their own way, in need of comfort. Aside from Analisa and her elderly nanny, Hilda, there's Sam, Analisa's attorney uncle; Trevor, a young boy in need of companionship; Walter, the chatty old man who plays solitary chess games; and Maria, a single and pregnant young mother of two struggling to keep her family home. As friendships grow, sorrows lift, and lives and hearts connect, each will discover just how far and how high one simple letter can reach...


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