When the Morning Glory Blooms

Cynthia writes stories of hope that glows in the dark, merging her love for storytelling with inextinguishable hope for inexpressible hurts. 
Cynthia spends her days diving into words, worship, and wonder and celebrating 40 years of marriage, three grown children, and five outrageously adorable grandchildren. One of her greatest joys is helping other writers grow in their craft. To that end, she served as the assistant director and a faculty member of the Quad Cities Christian Writers Conference, has served as worship and devotions staff for the Write-to-Publish conference, and teaches at other conferences as opportunities arise. She speaks to women’s groups, at mother-daughter banquets, and for women’s refresher days and retreats. It is her delight to serve on her church’s worship team. Rather than “busy,” she likes the term “active.” 
For 33 years, Cynthia wrote and produced the radio broadcast The Heartbeat of the Home. The scripted radio drama/devotional broadcast aired on as many as 50 radio stations and two cable/digital television stations over the years. Cynthia was the editor of the ministry’s Backyard Friends magazine, a twenty-page, twice annual publication that reached 5,000 homes, churches, and parachurch outreaches.
Cynthia can be reached through the Contact link on her Website.

Becky rocks a baby that rocked her world. Sixty years earlier, with her fiancé Drew in the middle of the Korean Conflict, Ivy throws herself into her work at a nursing home to keep her sanity and provide for the child Drew doesn't know is coming. Ivy cares for Anna, an elderly patient who taxes Ivy's listening ear until the day she suspects Anna's tall tales are not the ramblings of dementia. They're fragments of Anna's disjointed memories of a remarkable life. Finding a faint thread of hope she can't resist tugging, Ivy records Anna's memoir, scribbling furiously after hours to keep up with the woman's emotion-packed, grace-hemmed stories. Is Ivy's answer buried in Anna's past? Becky, Ivy, Anna--three women fight a tangled vine of deception in search of the blossoming simplicity of truth. 
If you would like to read the first chapter of When The Morning Glory Blooms, go HERE. 

My Thoughts:
I'm not sure even where to start!  Cynthia Ruchti is an author who I knew nothing about until this blog opportunity through Christian Fiction Blog Alliance.  She now has my full attention and I will be following her future writing and reading everything coming from her!  When the Morning Glory Blooms will go on my "keeper" shelf to stay.  The story within its pages is one I have pondered ever since I finished the book and will for some time to come.  Typically I have found fiction books that cover mulitple eras and go back and forth to be somewhat confusing to follow, but not this story.  While covering the stories of three different women from the 1890's, 1951 and 2013, Ruchti writes a story that flows and you simply will find hard to put down.  Woven throughout the story of these three women are biblical truths about forgiveness, love, hope, repentance, restoration and real ministry.  You will laugh and you will cry reading this story, but most important of all you will encounter the Christ Who transforms us all through His abundant and life-giving and amazing grace.  I won't forget this story for a while if ever!

Blessings and Happy Reading,
Jennifer