Book Review: One Tuesday Morning

If you ask anyone from my generation to tell you about a defining moment in our lives, September 11, 2001, would be among the highest responses. For myself, I remember vividly exactly where I was and who I was with when I first found out about that dreadful event. I was in my First hour class, in my hometown high school of Alpena, AR and the strictest teacher in the building brought in a TV on a cart to allow us to watch the news feed live. What struck me the hardest was the intercom going off every few minutes, the office was asking if so and so was in class this morning. I realized that the parents of my classmates were calling the school to reassure themselves that their children were safe and where they were supposed to be located. The reaction from my classmates of the live feed caused more anger and fear than I had ever experienced before in my short life. Fast forward a few years and almost 1/3 of the male students in my high school that day enlisted in the military.

Over twenty years later and I had forgotten the intensity of those emotional days. Up until a week ago, when I read Karen Kingsbury’s One Tuesday Morning, all those emotions and intense mental anguish came rushing back to me along with the action and character development in the novel. This almost seemed to strengthen the hold her novel had over me. I rushed to finish the story—the fastest I’ve completed a book in years—I became so involved in the novel that the thought of not completing it became a nonissue. I HAD to know what happened to those characters. The hardest part of reading this novel was knowing that one of the two main characters died. (It is stated on the back of the book) This idea was hurtful, knowing that one of the families I had come to identify with was going to be devastated.

A plot twist or 2 later – no spoilers! – I was surprised and pleased to know that I had been unable to guess the ending and was just as emotional at the ending of the novel as at the beginning during the events of 9/11. If September 11 is a trigger or emotional trauma for you, I DO NOT recommend this book. There are too many emotional scenes and historic events that will be too much to handle if that is the case. Please avoid this book. However, if like myself you view the past as a window in time and a way to learn from our mistakes the I recommend this novel and the enjoyable emotional attachment and the return of a powerful spiritual message.

-Melanie

Read my review of Book 2 here.