Book Review: Terri

Title: Terri 

Author: Sharon Srock 

Date: 2017 

ISBN: 978-1386418672 

Quote: "You're going to make a wonderful foster parent." 

So says a bossy, entitled social worker who clearly thinks of her job as governing and badly needs the kind of reform that puts people like her flatly in their place as civil servants. Ms. Wilson is all too realistically drawn, in this novel. People I know have mentioned people like Ms. Wilson as the reason why, although they're well-off empty nesters who did well with their own children, they won't consider adopting or fostering children. 

I'm quite sure this character was based on a real person. I want to see that person's position, in which she's allowed to make decisions about what she thinks (or, more likely, feels) is best for other people, cut back to a matter of checking boxes ("/This servant witnessed that My Superior Ms. Hayes met the objective requirements for foster parents"). After all, it's not good for children if either parents or foster parents allow themselves to be bossed and bullied by people who probably self-selected for the degree they earned by being in the bottom half of their classes. Maybe all social workers should be required to wear orange aprons and reminded, hourly, "When the servant, who depends on government for employment, is in the presence of Taxpayers who are either privately employed or employed directly by their customers, the servant's manners must always show due respect to the Taxpayers' superior position. Insubordination is grounds for dismissal. The servant should apologize and ask permission to raise its forehead from the floor." 

Apart from Ms. Wilson's continual insubordination and the unfortunate fact that she's still alive at the end of the book, this is a delightful feel-good novel. 

Steve Evans was married and had two children. Terri Hayes naturally didn't think of him as a potential mate. And he wasn't always a very good husband; he used drugs. But now he's sober and a serious Christian, and when another admirer proposes to Terri, all she feels is disappointed because he's not Steve. 

Terri loves children. She has a day care service and signs up to be a foster mother. The first child delivered into her custody is three-year-old Kelsey, the daughter of twenty-year-old Sean and Ella. When she picks up Kelsey, instead of going back to her own home, she goes to Steve's house as a guest. A pipe broke and her house needs extensive repairs. Anyway Steve's children are old enough to be effective, if giggly, chaperones. 

Sean and Ella have done nothing really wrong, except have a baby while young and poor. Sean makes much better money on a construction job than he does at McDonald's, but when he finishes a day shift on the construction job he's late to work and gets fired from McDonald's. Ella seems to think he should have quit the construction job, which, especially after the fact, annoys Sean enough that their conversation gets loud and angry. Someone calls the police. Sean has, in fictive fact, been smoking marijuana. Actually he smoked to temper the effect of stimulants--"pills" plus an "energy drink"--and the quarrel with his wife brings to his attention that overstimulating his system may be doing harm; having little Kelsey removed from the house is a wake-up call. But if Sean weren't an unusually conscientious young man, the predictable pattern of male ego defense would have predictably turned even that wake-up call, even if not aggravated by the odious Ms. Wilson, into the beginning of one of the stories we hear from homeless addicts. Men like Sean sometimes respond well to an older friend (like Steve) telling them when they're being stupid; they do not respond well to social workers who've been allowed to say anything to taxpayers but "Please Sir, may this servant thank Your Responsibleness for allowing this servant to depend on a government job." 

Meanwhile Steve's children have fun with a little "parent trap" scheme they call Project S.E.T.H. The adults find out, of course. They refuse to be pushed together by the children. They even have a serious lovers' quarrel about the way Steve talks to Sean. However, this novel has been billed as a romance. Guess what they'll call their first son. 

It may be on the corny side (this novel does come from the Corn Belt) but it's a believable study of how Christians deal with social issues, with a sweet romance mixed in. If you like sweet romances and are not Christian-phobic you'll enjoy this book.