Hello, Old Friend

I got a big box of books from my folks when they downsized and I've been making my way through it this summer. I was very happy when I started reading Blessings by Anna Quindlen. This was a book I loved when I read it the first time, but somehow forgot the title. I rediscovered an old friend. Huzzah! In a nutshell this is the story of an old woman and a young man who have to deal with a foundling left at their front door, and which, in turn, enables them to deal with the decisions in their pasts that made them who they are.

Somehow this book evokes feelings of peacefulness in me. Here are some highlights from the beginning: The house sat, big and white, low and sprawling, in a valley of overgrown fields, its terrance gardens spilling white hydrangeas, blue bee balm, and bushy patches of catnip and lavender onto a flagstone patio that ran its length. The land surrounding it was flat and rich for a long ways, to the end of the drive, and then the stony mountains rose around as though to protect it, a great God-sized berm spiky with pine trees.

And ...taken altogether it was something almost perfect, the sort of place that, from the road...promised plenty without pretense, ease without arrogance. From the road Blessings looked like a place where people would sit on the terrace at dusk, sip a drink and exult in the night breeze over the mountain, pull a light cardigan around their shoulders, and go to bed content.

Quindlen does an excellent job of evoking feelings in the reader--which is, in fact, our primary responsibility as authors.
Good luck with your own evocations!