White Picket Fences by Susan Meissner

Blog Tour and Giveaway: "White Picket Fences" by Susan Meissner

Reviewed by Amanda S.

In White Picket Fences, Neil and Amanda Janvier feel obligated to take in the daughter of Amanda’s estranged brother. Tally was staying with her grandmother when she passed away suddenly, and Tally finds herself with nowhere to go since her dad is out of the country and hasn’t contacted her. What will it be like living with her Aunt Amanda? Will they force her to tell why her dad went to Europe, a secret she promised to keep?

Do I want to know the truth of what happened all those years ago? If I find out the truth, how will it change me? These are the questions that Chase Janvier is asking himself regarding an incident that happened when he was four years old. Not knowing what to do, Chase keeps his secret to himself. That is, until Tally shows up at their house. Tally can tell that something isn’t right about Chase after they start working together on a Holocaust project. They interview two Holocaust survivors in a nearby nursing home and Tally notices Chase reacting oddly to certain parts of the story they are being told.

Amanda also begins to notice some pretty dramatic changes in Chase that cause her to wonder if he really does remember what happened all those years ago. But if he remembered, he would tell them, wouldn’t he? Should she ask him about it? What kind of damage would she do if she brings it up and he really doesn’t remember? Clearly, though, something is wrong and Amanda just doesn’t know what to do or which direction to turn.

Will they all be able to handle the truth when all the secrets are revealed?

As always, Susan Meissner does a wonderful job weaving a tale of deception, secrets, and twisted paths. The characters in this story have a serious problem with trust…trust in each other and trust in God, which unnerved me throughout the story. When I first picked up this book, I was intrigued by the cover: a white picket fence with a cobweb near the top. It’s so easy for people to look like they have it all-together on the outside with their pretty houses and white picket fences. But on the inside, all families have secrets and cobwebs hiding from the real world.

I always enjoy reading books my Meissner, and White Picket Fences was no different. Her books always challenge a person to really take a hard look at themselves, deep inside, to discover their true character. She caused me to ask myself how I would handle the truth if some long-ago family secret was revealed to me? Would I let it weigh me down or would I allow it to cause me to grow as a person?


This review originally written for and published on LuxuryReading.com.

Grant's Farm - Family Trip

This year, in lieu of taking a family vacation (which we had neither the time nor the money to do), we decided to do a few smaller things as a family in the month of September. One of our first things we did was to go to Grant's Farm in St Louis, where Ulysses S. Grant lived for a time.

The first part of the day when you walk into the park is a 'tram ride'--sort of a tour of the grounds. These swans were on a pond that we passed...I just *love* swans. :)

At the end of the tram ride is the center of the park where the animals are. This is the entrance to that area.

When you walk through here, the first thing you see on your left is the goat feeding area. Oh. My. Goodness. There are sooo many goats!! We decided to do the 'day pass' for each of the boys, where they would get to feed the goats twice, get a snow cone, and ride the carousel. We fed the first of our goat bottles the very first thing, as the boys were so excited about it. Well, when it came time to actually get IN the goat pen, Clayton decided he didn't want to! LOL There were just so many goats and they were just clamoring for the milk. So, Terry put him on his shoulders, but as you can see, that didn't really keep him 'safe'. LOL This goat decided to get up on Terry and drink the milk right at C's 'shoe level', which kinda freaked him out!

Brent had a blast feeding the goats...they were trampling all over him trying to get the milk, but he just had one bottle. One of the goats (below right) just decided to start eating Brent's shorts since he couldn't get the milk! ROFL (Actually, by the look of the goats eyes, he almost looked like he couldn't see very well, so I'm not sure he really knew what he was going after....)



There were these massive turtles (er, tortoises) out in there little area...you can see how big they were compared to the boys...and you can see how close the kids were to the animals.

They stopped to watch this elephant and were just really intrigued by it. (I have NO idea who those other two kids were....)

There was a 'wild bird show' that we went to and they did this little "Rat Race" with these kids. They brought out 2 rats and had the kids stand holding hands, then they let the rats go to race across the kids' arms/shoulders. Well.... Ewww. The rats went INSIDE the shirts of these kids when going across!! I told the boys it was a good thing they didn't get called on cuz we would have BURNT those shirts!!!

This was their carousel ride....why, oh why, does Brent have to make those funny faces when I take his pic??? LOL



At the end of our day, we got their snow cones and sat at the table in the 'vending area'...the boys' tongues and teeth turned the color of their slush, so of course they had to make funny faces while their mouths looked funny anyway. :)



On the other side of the parking lot was the Clydesdale stables, so we toured through there right before we left. It was feeding time for the horses, so we mostly just got rear-end-shots. :( But a very nice lady saw us snapping a couple shots of the boys by the statue and offered to take a family shot. So....just for 'you know who you are'....a family photo of us utterly exhausted LOL :

Bug Trap

One night while I was fixing dinner, Terry came out of the bathroom and said, "You need to go look at the bug trap someone made for you." See, with the cooler evenings we've had the window open and the attic fan on, and we had this hole in the screen of our bedroom window. So, someone decided to 'cover' the hole so that bugs wouldn't get in.

Well, after supper that night, I walked down the hallway and into my room and just started giggling. This is what I saw:



My two Vicks bottles and my Melatonin bottle all stacked on each other with a little fruit cup on top. You can see that he had a water bottle there and that he tried that...there were other bottles and things from my nightstand that he had tried to use.

And if you look at the second image, at the top of the hole, there is a little moth that he caught inside the fruit cup.

Very creative! :)