Blessings

Late one night, a teenage couple drives up to the big white clapboard home on the Blessing estate and leaves a box. In that instant, the lives of those who live and work there are changed forever. Skip Cuddy, the caretaker, finds a baby girl asleep in that box and decides he wants to keep the child . . . while Lydia Blessing, the matriarch of the estate, for her own reasons, agrees to help him. "Blessings" explores how the secrets of the past affect decisions and lives in the present; what makes a person or a life legitimate or illegitimate and who decides; and the unique resources people find in themselves and in a community. This is a powerful novel of love, redemption, and personal change by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer about whom "The Washington Post Book World" said, "Quindlen knows that all the things we ever will be can be found in some forgotten fragment of family."

About the Author :
Anna Quindlen is the bestselling author of four novels ("Blessings," "Black and Blue," "One True Thing," and "Object Lessons") and four nonfiction books ("A Short Guide to a Happy Life," "Living Out Loud," "Thinking Out Loud," and "How Reading Changed My Life"). She has also written two children's books ("The Tree That Came to Stay" and "Happily Ever After"). Her "New York Times" column, "Public and Private," won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Her column now appears every other week in "Newsweek."

Review :
"A polished gem of a novel . . . lovingly crafted, beautifully written." --"The Miami Herald ""A WELL-TOLD STORY OF LOVE AND REDEMPTION." --"The Washington Post Book World ""[A] RICHLY IMAGINED NOVEL OF THE TRANSFORMING POWER OF LOVE." --"St. Louis Post-Dispatch ""EARNEST, DETAILED, AND COMFORTING . . . [Quindlen] delivers . . . on the promise of her title." --"Los Angeles Times ""Anna Quindlen is America's Resident Sane Person. She has what Joyce called the common touch, the ability to speak to many people about what's on their minds before they have the vaguest idea what's on their minds." --"The New York Times ""A well-told story of love and redemption, one that is not based on the passion of a man for a woman but on the affection and understanding that develops between people of very different backgrounds who are brought together by a baby named Faith and a house called Blessings." --"The Washington Post Book World ""Quindlen . . . is as concerned with the evolution of her characters as she is with the resolution of their story. . . . Quindlen's moving and gently humorous depiction of her characters' transformation is thoroughly persuasive. . . . [Her] immense sympathy for her characters remains intact, but her fidelity to certain truths is paramount." --"The New York Times Book Review ""[Quindlen] treats her protagonists and their hardships with such tenderness it's impossible not to grow fond of them." --"Entertainment Weekly" "IMMENSELY APPEALING . . . Quindlen's fine-tuned ear for the class distinctions of speech results in convincing dialogue. Evoking a bygone patrician world, she endows Blessings with an almost magical aura. . . . The narrative is old-fashioned in a positive way, telling a dramatic story through characters who develop and change, and testifying to the triumph of human decency when love is permitted to grow and flourish. . . . [A] feel-good novel, a book that