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    Daughters for a Time
    Daughters for a Time
    Daughters for a Time
    Audiobook7 hours

    Daughters for a Time

    Written by Jennifer Handford

    Narrated by Tanya Eby

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    When Helen Francis was a child, her mother died and her father walked out, leaving her to be raised by her older sister. Now thirty-five, married, and trying to start a family of her own, Helen has moved on but never really healed from her traumatic childhood. She has always believed that a new baby would help fill the loss of what was taken from her at such a young age. After four years of trying to become pregnant, however, she is resigned to the fact that she will never be able to bear children. Halfheartedly accepting adoption as an alternative, Helen gradually embraces and grows excited over the prospect. And when her new baby is finally in her arms, true happiness washes over her. But her unimaginable bliss is dashed when she learns that Claire, the sister who raised and loved her throughout her childhood and adult life, has been diagnosed with cancer.

    For Helen, the pain of her childhood returns and the old wounds of abandonment are once again torn open. Balancing the joy of her new daughter with the painful experience of watching her sister, the physical embodiment of unconditional love in her life, slowly die, Helen must reconcile her inner feelings and heal her broken spirit. A heart-wrenching exploration of the ties that bind us and the lasting pain of childhood loss, Daughters for a Time is about longing for a family to heal a broken heart, experiencing unconditional love as a parent, and finding solid ground to stand on when suffering and elation have equally powerful holds on our life.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateApr 24, 2012
    ISBN9781455897094
    Daughters for a Time
    Author

    Jennifer Handford

    Jennifer Handford was born in Phoenix, Arizona, where she lived until she moved to Oregon for college and graduate school. After graduation, she moved to Washington, D.C., and has lived in the Virginia/Washington, D.C., area for fifteen years. Jennifer is married and has three daughters. Daughters for a Time was awarded one of three first place prizes in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. It is her first novel.

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    Reviews for Daughters for a Time

    4.5/5

    20 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Tender telling of a very American story!
    • 5/5
      I cried many tears while reading this book. It was one of those that you just can't put down.... I hope Ms. Handford will write more - I am surely looking forward to reading any new books.
    • 4/5
      Helen and her husband Tim own a successful DC eatery, they’re a couple that seem to have it all until you look below the surface. Helen has survived her childhood, her fear of rejection and inadequacy, her mother’s death from Ovarian Cancer and her father’s desertion only by the steady hand of her older sister Claire. But even Claire has managed to get the one thing that Helen so desperately wants, a child of her own. As Helen struggles with infertility drugs and cycles, adoption is mentioned more than once, but Helen can’t seem to get her head around not having her own. But the more she examines the brochures about all the abandoned girls in China, some left on roads only days old she feels her heart begin to melt and after a last failed attempt at pregnancy she and Tim set out on a journey to bring home a daughter not of their blood but of their heart. Helen is in for all kinds of surprises when she returns home with her new little girl and some of them won’t be easy to take, will she be able to handle the good with the bad, or will the ghosts of her past haunt her future as well.Jennifer Handford’s debut novel Daughters for a Time is a poignant, beautiful and at times heartbreaking read. Her plot could be any town, any house USA where the inhabitants battle their infertility and what to do about it, but she gave me a little more as well as she brings to light the real problem of Chinese girl children being abandoned, in fact up to a million children are abandoned in China each year and the majority of them are healthy baby girls. Her dialogue is easy to read and I found it hard to put the novel down. Her characters are at times funny, at times sad and at times frustratingly bullheaded but they all seemed very real to me. There are a couple of things that set this novel apart from being just a piece of fiction, the moral is very real and the relationship between the sisters is spot-on. This novel will appeal to a multitude of readers, from romance lovers, family drama fans, to literary fiction enthusiasts. And if they’re like me they’ll all come away with the satisfaction of having read something that spoke to their heart.Ms. Handford I look forward to our next journey together as this one was exceptional