I Couldn't Help But Fall In Love!

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This is a beautiful tale of an 81 year old woman who lived a rather interesting life, writing a newspaper column since 1964 documenting just about everything. But as we all know, you there are some things that just can’t go on paper, we need to hold close in our hearts.

Haze has been writing this fantastic newspaper column for many, many years. It earned the title of “Chronicle of a Radical Hag (with Recipes). This column didn’t seem to miss anything: casual observation of fellow townsfolk to death, to lack of children and abortion to politics and some had recipes included.

When has a massive stroke and her fellow reporters start going through her published column (yes, she saved them all!) and start republishing them. This is when the editor’s, Susan, son jumps in to help, and we see how he matures through this. Sam is about 15 years old and is really just an ordinary teen age boy, sending imaginary texts to famous people, or at least people he doesn’t really speak to. We follow him as he grows up reading these past column, even to the point where he forges a friendship with an elderly man that wrote in to the editor in major disagreement as to what Haze had written.

Through this story we get to see love, growth, heartache, laughter and so much more. Haze has a beautiful marriage to Royal, who tragically dies of a heart attack early in their marriage. Haze later ends up having an affair with the married editor of the paper, Susan’s father.
Haze talks about her brief pregnancy with that same editor that was miscarried. That is where she finally told someone that she was sleeping with her married boss.

This was quite a page turner and highly entertaining! There are actual recipes throughout the book as well, recipes like “Aunt Alma’s Goodwill Crescent Cookies”, “Spread the Love Banana Bread”, “Heavenly Honey Muffins”, and more. I couldn’t help but fall in love with Haze and all the other characters as well. This book is not to be missed!

This book introduced me to an author I was not familiar with before, but an author I am excited to explore more stories from. This was just an beautiful, heartwarming, breath of fresh air.