JoDee Neathery’s Wings Against the Wind begins as a Paris-set tale of illicit love and suspicious death: Gretchen Cassidy, a young American in France, loses her older married lover, Andrew Dupont, just as their affair seems poised to alter both their lives; from there the novel veers outward into grief, exile, reinvention, motherhood, custody battles, illness, and second chances, carrying Gretchen from the charged glamour of rare books and police interviews into a much broader saga about survival and chosen family.

I was pulled in less by the initial mystery than by the book’s willingness to keep changing altitude. What starts with a dead man at the foot of a staircase and a wife who seems almost too composed gradually opens into something warmer and more sprawling: a story about being battered by circumstance without surrendering one’s tenderness. Gretchen, especially, is written as someone both naïve and stubborn in a way that feels emotionally legible; she’s not polished into a saint, which helped me stay with her. I also liked the novel’s unabashed affection for books, places, songs, and gestures of care. Neathery does not write in a minimalist register; she likes ornament, atmosphere, and emotional declaration, and when that sensibility works, it gives the novel a kind of full-bodied earnestness that feels almost old-fashioned in the best sense.

This story takes risks by piling on turns that another novelist might shave away: Heidelberg, homelessness, triplets, adoption, a custody fight, a new romance, a child’s medical crisis, even an act of startling generosity late in the book. Sometimes the novel can be melodramatic, but I was still genuinely moved. The book has a real pulse for consolation, and it kept persuading me with its sincerity. By the end, I was reading to see whether these bruised people might finally be granted a harbor. On that score, the novel absolutely knows what it is doing.

I’d recommend Wings Against the Wind to readers of women’s fiction, family drama, romantic suspense, contemporary romance, and emotionally driven literary fiction who like sweeping, eventful novels with ache, uplift, and a strong belief in redemption. Readers who enjoy authors like Nicholas Sparks will recognize the blend of heartache, fate, and healing here, though Neathery’s book is baggier and more baroque in its plotting. It’s a story that keeps reaching for grace even when life has already slammed the door.

Pages: 326 | ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0GR89T9PL