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On a quiet street in the suburban Midwest, a popular, seemingly stable family keeps a terrible, dark secret behind closed doors -- a secret that will have life-changing consequences for all who know them Sarah Laden, a young widow and mother of two, struggles to keep her family together. Since the death of her husband, her high-school-age son, Nate, has developed a rebellious streak, constantly falling in and out of trouble. Her kindhearted younger son, Danny, though well behaved, struggles to pass his remedial classes. All the while, Sarah must make ends meet by running a catering business out of her home. But when a shocking and unbelievable revelation rips apart the family of her closest friend, Sarah finds herself welcoming yet another young boy into her already tumultuous life. Jordan, a quiet and reclusive elementary-school boy and classmate of Danny's, has survived a terrible tragedy, leaving him without a family. When Sarah becomes Jordan's foster mother, a relationship develops that will force her to question the things of which she thought she was so sure. Yet Sarah is not the only one changed by this young boy, and as the delicate balance that holds her family together begins to falter, the Ladens will all face truths about themselves and one another -- and discover the power of love to forgive and to heal. Powerful and poignant, The Kindness of Strangers is a shocking look at how the tragedy of a single family in a small suburban town can affect so many. Katrina Kittle has created a haunting vision of the secret lives of the people we think we know best. Through gripping and heartrending storytelling, The Kindness of Strangers shows that even after the most grave injuries, redemption is always possible.… (more)
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Something about the characters, something about the flow of the words…even though the characters are pretty stock, the words are well-chosen but neither beautiful nor outstanding…there’s something about “The Kindness of Strangers” that I couldn’t resist.
(OK – I’ve been trying to avoid spoiling the big reveal in the book since it’s not on the dust jacket…but I will probably have to pull the rabbit out of the hat here or I’m going to sound like an idiot. So – SPOILER ALERT!)
Jordan, an only child from what seems like the perfect family in what seems like the perfect small town in Ohio, is the victim of such horrendous abuse from his parents that at times the situation seems ridiculously far-fetched. It’s not, though, as news stories can attest…it’s just on the very, very far edge of believable. If one can get past that and suspend disbelief enough to accept the story, the idea of what this boy was forced to endure is heart wrenching.
“It was Wednesday night. Wednesday. He was safe on Wednesdays. He could relax and pretend they were a normal family. He was in his room, studying math. The intercom clicked on and his mom said, “There’s somebody here for you.” Who? He knew it wasn’t Danny. Not anymore. Billy Porter? Billy sucked at math and asked Jordan to help him all the time, even though he wouldn’t even sit with Jordan at lunch. Would Billy actually come to Jordan’s house just for the math homework? Jordan didn’t think anything of it because it was Wednesday. Bad things never happened on Wednesdays, so he’d walked downstairs right into it. When he saw the new people, a man and a woman, and the lights set up, he’d even stuttered, “B-but it’s Wednesday.” The couple laughed. His mom and dad laughed. And their laughter broke something in him. Or maybe fixed something in him, because he’d decided not to be “a good, good boy,” and he’d fought it, which he hadn’t done since those first times. It took all of them to hold him down.”
This was the most gut-wrenching and eloquent part of the story for me. The idea that a little boy who had endured so much physical and mental anguish at the hands of people who professed to love him, could pretend to be part of a normal family for one day a week, held on to that one day a week…until even that small piece of safety and normalcy was ripped from him…just breaks my heart.
Other than Jordan, the other compelling character is Nate, the oldest son of Sarah, a friend of Jordan’s mother. Nate is the perfect age between child and adult to let us see the struggle he has to both relate to Jordan and try and help him. He tries to alternatively be Jordan’s friend and be a surrogate parent figure…and for a boy who’s father has recently died…it’s quite a struggle.
When Nate breaks the rules and visits Jordan in the hospital – the nurses and doctors start to remove him from the room.
“Jordan said, ‘I want him to stay.’”
“Nate felt a combination of victory and terror at those words.”
And later, when Jordan comes to live with Nate and his family:
“Nate walked away, but he didn’t want to go into the house, so he sat in the sandbox and thought about his dad. He thought his dad would approve of their fostering Jordan, but he also knew that they would never have done it if Dad was alive. There wouldn’t be room. And he didn’t mean room in the house, but that there wouldn’t have been room inside them, inside their lives. They wouldn’t have known they were strong enough to do this.”
At times beautiful, at times so appalling (in subject matter) that I seemed barely able to stomach the words my eyes passed across. It absorbed me for a few days and something about the story stays with me. Something…
I do think, however, that the journey for the characters and for the reader would have been FAR more fulfilling had the prologue been omitted. Knowing how the story ends makes the achievement of getting there much less satisfying. The characters have no idea if and how they will endure – and neither should the reader.
Sarah Laden, a recent widow struggling to now raise two boys entirely on her own, has her world turned upside down when a shocking secret is discovered about her long-time friends, the Kendrick family. Faced with the possibility that she may not have really known them at all, and that the woman most responsible for her recovery after the death of her husband may have had a far darker motive for her actions than Sarah could have ever imagined, the already fragile balance that is her everyday existence now seems to be more difficult than ever before. And when the Laden family makes the decision to add another child to the family, the traumatized young Jordan Kendrick, things become even more complicated yet. What hope is there for this family to survive, and can they find the happiness together that seems to have been missing for far too long?
For anyone who has ever followed the news, you know that the most horrible crimes are often committed by the seemingly most unlikely people. Friends and neighbors are almost always heard to say after the truth is discovered that they "had no idea" and "it can't be true, they're such nice people". It was good to read a book that takes this real-life rule to heart. The 'bad guys' here aren't the creepy or strange people that everyone steers clear of. Rather, they're seemingly normal family people who volunteer at school events, participate in their community, and are seemingly good friends or acquaintances to many people, all of whom have no idea of the truth until the police get involved. This book will haunt you, educate you, and hopefully let you understand the deeper issues a bit better. Yes, there are times that you want to grab one of the characters and slap them out of their denial, until you think about how you would feel in their position. For better or worse, the emotions and reactions in this book are true to real life, as unfortunate as that can sometimes be.
Without any doubts, this book definitely warrants 5/5 stars. This is one for the keeper shelf.
The story is painful and often predictable (more
This is not good literature, not even fun and light reading.
This book was extremely powerful and moving. It deals with a very difficult and hard to comprehend subject, the idea that your closest friend isn't who you thought she was. That she could allow and perhaps even participate in the sexual abuse of her child. Due to the heavy topic of this book, I would have to say that it wouldn't be for everybody. It definitely wasn't a casual or "beach" read.
Katrina Kittle has written such a powerful book where a grief-stricken family gets thrown into the world of child pornography by a family close to them. You see the change, pain and growth of not only the mother, Sarah Laden, and her sons, Nate and Danny, but also of the little boy who suffered through so much abuse, Jordan. There were moments I found this book very difficult to read, so much that I had to put it down for a couple of days and then go back to it. Kittle writes in such a way that you really can't just abandon this family as they try to get through this tragedy, especially Jordan who was hurt the most. If you want a powerful read that will proves there is a happy ending, even in the most horrific times, then I recommend this book.