Title: The Miracle of Mistletoe
Author: Emily Dana Botrous
Date: 2020
Publisher: Amazon
Quote: "[S]he'd just asked Marcy to write a poem for her wedding to Marcy's brother. What a laugh."
The big bad secret that has blown up to monstrous size in Marcy's emotional life is that Marcy is dyslexic. Like most dyslexic people, she's also clever; like many, she uses her cleverness mostly to deny and conceal her "stupidity," defines intelligence in terms of reading and/or arithmetic (whichever the dyslexic individual has most trouble with), and tells herself she's stupid and inadequate.
Marcy is married to Colt, who is at least bi- and possibly triracial. A grandfather he never met spoke Spanish, though Colt doesn't; Colt doesn't know whether his ancestors originated in Spain or Mexico.) Colt has been telling himself he has no friends because he's neither Black nor White, but an unexpected reconnection with his long-lost sister has reminded him that that's only the tip of the iceberg. He's isolated and unhappy mainly because he has chronic pain from an injury. The injury was caused by a stepfather's violent abuse. After he and his sister were separated by the Welfare State Colt bonded with a foster father, a foster brother, Marcy, and God. He still works in his foster father's business, which involves lots of unplanned air travel that doesn't do his back any good, and although his religious faith has been of great help to him, he still feels emotionally damaged.
Stupidity is a choice and, blinded by their own pain, both of these Bright Young Things keep making stupid choices throughout this sweet (but steamy) romance. (Readers are spared the details, but told exactly what one of Colt's main causes of pain entails.) Colt doesn't tell Marcy he's been talking and texting with his sister. Marcy doesn't tell Colt how the boy she dated before she met him has been tormenting her with the verbal abuse of which some adolescent friendships and romances are made. Marcy has stopped telling Colt that she enjoys looking at him, although she does. Colt doesn't dare tell Marcy how much he hates living in her hometown, although she wants to be near her parents...
This is the little fictional town of Claywood, close enough to my real-world town that its residents go to the same bigger towns we visit to shop at big-chain stores, catch planes, etc. Abingdon, Bristol, Big Stone Gap, Kingsport...Here I stand to testify that, yes, part of life in this part of the world is young people's going somewhere else, anywhere else, in search of fresh DNA. And when we find some good fresh genes to breed into our own pool, quite often the carriers of those genes want nothing to do with our "insular, petty, gossippy," etc., home towns. And when they can be persuaded to live close to our elders, probably as a temporary arrangement because an elder is ill, they often have a difficult time.
In my twenties, as some of the cousins married before I did, I had opportunities to see that mine was not the easiest family to marry into. Nor was the family I considered marrying into. So, once again, just this winter, a new reader of this web site said to a relative of mine, "Was she ever married?" and the relative said, "First I ever heard of it." Indeed. In view of the way certain relatives had behaved toward my boyfriend, which was matched by the way some of his relatives behaved toward me, I did not think anyone else I might care about needed to be "treated like an in-law." My parents knew whom I'd married, when, how, and why, but on one occasion I found it useful that my natural sister had no idea. For me, as for several young people in my part of the world, marriage was part of our lives outside of our home towns. We didn't have blogs yet, and we, as a generation, never had written letters.
Those of us who do persuade our Partners for Life to live, even temporarily, in our home towns are likely to find, as Marcy does, that they hate the places we love. Colt doesn't claim that Marcy's family are racists--his abusive stepfather might actually have been one, so he knows the difference--but he feels that he can't really fit in with either Black or White people, much less Spanish-speaking people. (His sister, though not Cuban, has found it easy to fit in with Cubans.) Colt is not, as my husband used to be, troubled by a belief that there are still active gangs of people who would violently attack any dark-skinned man they perceived as travelling "with" a lighter-skinned woman; in Washington my husband liked the idea of saying to anyone who stared at us "Yes? We are both part Indian," but on road trips he worried that, although I still actually worked as a secretary, violent lunatics might be less hostile if they saw him as my chauffeur rather than seeing me as his secretary. Mixed couples had been murdered, if not during my husband's lifetime, not so many years before he was born. We are generally law-abiding in Virginia but we do tend to "treat people like in-laws," and think of them as "the one from..." Colt seems much more clearheaded than we're told most of his generation are, because he doesn't blame racism for all of it, but then again he seems to encounter much less of the "in-law" treatment than some of the real people who marry into small towns in Virginia.
Somebody out there--as it might be the parents of the last child to whom I was seen talking to, whom some local know-it-all has decided must have been mine, which is simply ridiculous--somebody needs this thought. If you have persuaded "the one from" to stay with you, here, celebrate the person's particularities; looks, and everything else.
Colt and Marcy seem to be insecure extroverts, for whom social life, as they understand it, seems to come easily. Colt has complained of not having friends in Claywood. Then he lets himself get into a conversation with a local man and feels that, "as easily as that," he has a friend in Claywood. Introverts call that sort of thing acquaintance. It can be the ground where friendship grows. It is not what we call friendship, but it is where most social relationships begin.
Colt and Marcy have one misunderstanding and reconciliation after another because they have the same basic problem: lack of self-esteem. I don't think that particular relationship dynamic is at all common. I think there are a lot more people who suffer from inflated self-esteem, thinking they are nice, likable people when they're not, than people who think they are not likable when they are. Then there are the people who are nice and likable and not looking for new friends, and the people who have been told they're not nice or likable, although they are, but who will not become more gregarious when they develop a healthy appreciation for themselves, and other categories of people who are more interesting to introvert readers than Colt and Marcy. Never mind. Colt and Marcy think they're not lovable, and they are. That makes them interesting character studies, perhaps even helpful to some readers. In the 1980s it was commonplace for teachers and preachers to assume that whole schools and churches were full of people like Colt and Marcy. Knowledge advances through false starts. By working with the assumption that most people would be like Colt and Marcy we learned that most people aren't, very much. This novel does, however, offer some insight into how to help people like Colt and Marcy if you know any.
Colt and Marcy at least seem less likely than some insecure extroverts are to overreact to any encouragement. I once told a woman who had offered me a lift back from church that I was willing to count her as a friend--she had asked rather piteously. Given that moment of encouragement, she flung herself around my neck and clung like a polyester leisure suit for several awkward seconds, then barged past me onto the porch, where she tried the door and, finding it unlocked, marched right into the house. In real life, caution is appropriate when any encouragement is given to extroverts. In romances, however, they tend to behave well even if encouraged.
I enjoyed this novel for its local interest, and look forward to more from the author. It's a thoroughly Christian story, with characters praying and Marcy believing she's almost literally heard a reply from God during one of her prayers. If you prefer the sort of "Christian romance" where weddings take place in a lovely old church, but nobody preaches, read something else. If you want a plausible study of young Christians developing character in the context of marriage this one is a pearl.
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