Lone Star Book Blog Tour: Mornings on Main by Jodi Thomas

She was never able to put down roots; if she had any other family, she wasn’t aware and her father disappeared when she went to college.  For all the wandering, Jillian might have seen herself a free spirit, but instead, I saw her as haunted and abandoned, unable to trust anyone but herself. (Thanks, dad.)

She wasn’t the only character who was a bit untethered in the story, and I liked the parallels between them. Eugenia Larady owns the quilt shop Jillian comes to work in, and it’s soon obvious that Eugenia’s Alzheimer’s disease is progressing. She is losing her connection to the present, and at times finds herself in the past.

Eugenia’s teenage granddaughter Sunnie is the third character who is at loose ends. She is rebellious and the front she shows people is in direct contrast to her name – she dresses in black, eyes heavily lined, hair bleached pale, and is as sullen as she is not “sunny”. Three years prior she lost her mother, and while she is close to her grandmother, she’s close to losing her (at least as she knows her) too.

Lastly, there is Connor, who gave up his dreams of exploring the world and is the person that everyone in town counts on. He feels the weight of the legacy he’s been left in the form of derelict buildings that kill him in taxes; he writes books that no one sees, and a weekly paper that he’s not sure if anyone reads. He feels his mother and his daughter slipping away.

Eugenia is lost to the past, Jillian searches for her past, and Sunnie is acting out  against her losses, while Connor is overwhelmed trying to hold everything together (and not think about all he is losing and has lost).

With that, I will say that this is not a sad novel, although Jodi Thomas WILL wrap her words around your heart and tug at it, in not so much an emotional roller-coaster, but more a trip down a river that ebbs and flows.   Her character development is simply lovely, and I fell in love with the town and its inhabitants. Like Jillian, and Eugenia’s son Connor, even the town is a little lost and tired. And through the course of the novel, everyone (and everything) comes a bit back to life.

Woven throughout the novel were the stories behind the quilts that Jillian was photographing and cataloging for Eugenia, and the quilts themselves became characters of sorts, telling their own stories and sharing memories and secrets.

She hadn’t followed Papa’s rule: Never get involved in other people’s problems.

 

What I loved about this story is despite the secrets and the hopes and dreams that Connor and Jillian keep from each other, they are drawn to each other. You will root for Jillian to finally make a home and lay down roots – but will she? It’s the opposite of everything she has ever known, and her boundaries keep her safe.

This is a story about finding yourself, and finding home – in a person and a place. I think it’s about self-acceptance, too. Give Jodi Thomas’ Mornings on Main a read and escape for a bit to Laurel Springs, Texas. You’ll be glad you did.