Resting in the Bosom of the Lamb

This book makes me long for a front porch, a rocking chair & good friends with stories to tell. Ms. Trobaugh certainly has given us once again people that we will not soon forget. I love all her books. Please read and enjoy.

An excellent story that was hard to set down because the author made me feel like I was sitting in a rocking chair on the huge southern front porch listening to an old family tale. Family secrets and much love between these women family members. Don't pass by this book, it's exceptionally good.

Pull up a rocker and sit next to Pet while she listens to the "stories" Cora reads from the family book. Ms. Trobaugh is such a great author that you start to feel like you're actually right there with these women sitting in the front room of their house in the dead of winter with fabric stuffed in the cracks around the windows to keep out the winter draft. The part of the story when Ms. Addie "passes over" is written so beautifully as well as so many other parts of the story. This book is about secrets that have been forgotten but not really forgotten but it's mostly about the complexities of the south in the 1940s when friends, families and races all intertwine. Don't miss the chance to read this book. It's so sweet to feel the closeness of the women and be "next to them" as they age but it's also sad to feel the bad times they also went through. As I already shared, this is an excellent book. I now live in S.C. but I'm fromm Pa., this story has made me understand a lot of things that I never experienced and used to have a hard time believing really happened, but I am the eternal optimist wearing rose colored glasses. Great story and it's one that you can get right into.

If you are from the south, or enjoy reading about the south, you will love Resting in the Bosom of the Lamb. I had the pleasure of listening to Augusta Trobaugh read aloud about the hilarious perils of Wynona's wedding, and I knew I had to read more. As she did in her first novel, Praise Jerusalem!, Augusta Trobaugh captures the essence of genuine southern living and culture. Trobaugh's real, believable characters are unlike the artificial, overexaggerated southern "hicks" which are often depicted through various media. Reminisce in the "old south" with Pet, Cora, Wynona, and Lauralee as they look back on the joys and sorrows of living.

Augusta Trobaugh's Resting in the Bosom of the Lamb masterfully draws the reader into the tiny world of four elderly southern women. Narrated by Pet, mostly in an interior monologue, the story is woven around some family secrets of tragic events that have been repressed by the characters. Pet is driven to bring the secrets to light to find some redemption for herself and others. This well-crafted novel leaves its tracks in the reader's mind. Trobaugh's prose is rich in memorable smiles. She describes heavy drapes "moving in drafts from the window, like old eyelids twitching in a dream." Trobaugh's style finds beauty in the commonplace and invites the reader to enjoy it with a new perspective. Growing up in the rural south, I have known places and characters like the ones Trobaugh fashions, but, never, have I seen them so truthfully depicted on the written page. This is a beautiful story, and I was sad to close the book on Pet, Cora, Wynona, and Lauralee. I wanted to sit with them and rock on the porch and listen to Cora's stories.