Please Remember This

I can't believe anyone found this book boring! Two stories wrap around each other. One is the story of Tess Lanier, daughter of famous writer Nina Lane--a mother she never knew. Raised by elderly grandparents, Tess' whole life has been about not being demanding, emotional and brilliant like her mother. When her grandparents die, Tess keeps a promise to go back to the small town in Kansas where they lived before the Depression, and where her famous mother lived. The second story, and maybe even better, is about a man determined to dig up an old riverboat, sunk before the Civil War, and the town rallying around his efforts, striving for an economic revival. I've lived in a small town that lost its center, and I found the efforts to save the town fascinating. Even more interesting was the boat itself, and the stories of the people whose lives were forever changed when it sank. Of course there's a romance, and it's a slow, gentle romance. I have no patience with "love at first sight"--I like people to get to know and understand each other, as they do here. Tess has to come to terms with her mother's legacy before she feels free to love and be loved. This isn't a thrilling book. No murders. No car chases. No sex scenes. Just delightful, well-developed characters, a more interesting than average setting, and a great story.

Once again, Seidel has delivered a beautifully written story filled with strong, likeable, believable characters. This one, like her others, is about family and healing and the importance of love--in all its permutations and complexities. The premise is immediately intriguing, and it continues to be fascinating as the plot unfolds, all the way to the end. I especially loved the setting and how real the small midwestern town and its inhabitants all seemed. My one problem with the book is in no way a criticism of it or of the author: I don't know why Seidel's publishers put "romance" on the spine of this book when it just isn't. Yes, there is a romance in it--and a good one, too--but the main point of the book is the heroine's inner search for resolution and meaning in her life. Along the way, she finds a new career, answers to mysteries that have colored her existence, friends, community, and love. The story is hers, and if readers know to expect that, they won't be disappointed.

Maybe Seidel has just never been promoted sufficiently by her publisher. That's the only reason I can come up with for why she is such a well kept secret from readers. I discovered her by word-of-mouth online from a big reader in Texas, Kitty, and have read everything since then that Seidel pens. I even found her out-of-print books and bought and read those. Her books are fairly quiet. There are no murders to solve, for example, as there are in seemingly the vast majority of today's fiction. So she makes up for it by coming up with highly original plots and characterizations. This novel is set in Kansas and involves a young woman who is the daughter of a famous, dead, counter culture author. Her mother is still so read and revered that her fans congregate together to worship her work in her writing situs in Kansas. The daughter wants no part of this adulation, especially since her mother was a suicide when she was just a newborn. Obtaining at long last though a financial settlement from her mother's publisher, she sets up a business in that very small town and comes into the lives of its permanent residents. The other main character is a young man who is digging up a boat that went down a century earlier. It carried cargo from all of their families. A local historical society is being formed by his brother for this excavation's results. The brother isn't being altruistic. The town needs a major shot in the arm for economic rejuvenation. I found this so absorbing that I could not put it down. Plus it was set in a very different yet fascinating locale with a splendid, believable romance at its center involving the two lead characters. You can't go wrong discovering Seidel if she's been kept a secret from you too.

Suffering from manic depression, Nina Lane could not cope with her sudden fame as a must read science fiction writer. Nina commits suicide three months after she gives birth to Tess. Her maternal grandparents raise the infant as far way from the Nina nonsense as possible. About twenty-four years later with her grandparents who raised her dead and feeling all alone, Tess decides to find out about her maternal heritage. She returns to her birth town of Fleur-de-lis, Kansas where she decides to open up a coffee and gift shop. Ned Ravenal sees his dreams about to occur as he leads the excavation of the Western Settler, a riverboat that sunk in the Missouri in 1857, but because of a river shift is currently buried under a corn field. When Ned and Tess meet, an attraction transpires between them. Since both are preoccupied and neither able to see the flying sparks between them, a relationship appears doubtful even if they fall in love. PLEASE REMEMBER THIS has all that fans of Kathleen Gilles Seidel expect with the novel containing strong prose, deep characters, and a powerful story line. However, this reviewer feels discontented in spite of a well-written book because the plot focuses on Tess' needs to discover the essence of her mother rather than the more fascinating Western Settler (past and present) as its core theme. Still, you can't always get what you want and Ms. Seidel does provide fans with a powerful emotion-laden contemporary romance.Harriet Klausner